Pittsburgh aims to be the safety capital of the world
Writer: Melis Turku Topa
September 2025 — Patient safety is more than a clinical concern; it is central to trust, economic resilience, and Pittsburgh’s reputation as a healthcare hub. As the city balances its industrial legacy with a growing innovation economy, its healthcare institutions are emerging as pioneers in patient safety, setting examples that extend far beyond Southwestern PA.
In 2024, the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority received 315,418 reports of patient-safety events through the statewide reporting system, the largest of its kind in the nation. This represented a 9.5% increase from the prior year, including a 7.3% rise in serious events.
While these numbers might seem worrying at first glance, experts interpret them differently.
Executive Director Regina Hoffman of the PSA has emphasized, “It is gratifying to see the increase in reporting; healthy reporting is associated with a culture that supports and prioritizes safety.” In other words, more reporting often signals stronger vigilance rather than worsening performance. The greater the transparency, the more opportunities hospitals have to intervene early, redesign processes, and prevent small failures from turning into significant harm.
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Few regions are as uniquely positioned as Pittsburgh to shape national safety practices.
“We shift within priorities. We don’t shift priorities,” Karen Feinstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, told Invest:. “What I’ve tried to do over 34 years is keep us focused. Our five priorities are safety — particularly patient safety — women’s health, teen mental health, HIV/AIDS, and older adults,” she explained. Feinstein has long been a national voice for patient safety, spearheading efforts to establish a National Patient Safety Board and most recently launching the CASH initiative with major partners to advance new policy directives.
She also makes the case that Pittsburgh has both the history and the present-day innovation to declare itself a global leader in safety. “Pittsburgh has not put out a claim to a label to which it is entitled. We could easily be called the Safety Capital of the World. Any book on industrial safety begins in Pittsburgh. We want to declare ourselves the safety capital of the world.”
Pittsburgh’s reputation for safety and health innovation is long-established. Breakthroughs such as the railway air brake, the invention of CPR by Peter Safar, and Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine all began here, giving the city credibility. Today, Pennsylvania operates PA-PSRS — the largest patient-safety reporting system in the country, with more than 5 million reports submitted since 2004 — and Pittsburgh hospitals are among its most active contributors. This gives the region unparalleled data for identifying patterns and testing interventions at scale. Unlike many areas where hospitals compete in silos, Pittsburgh benefits from a tradition of cross-system collaboration — through foundations, learning collaboratives, and public-private partnerships — enabling faster sharing of lessons and more rapid scaling of best practices.
Feinstein envisions Pittsburgh stepping into its rightful place as a leader in safety. But even with that bold vision, safety must be treated as a continuous journey. The landscape is constantly shifting, and with it come new challenges that demand vigilance, creativity, and resilience. Nationally, experts warn of safety threats tied to the dismissal of patient and family concerns, the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence without sufficient governance, vulnerabilities in cybersecurity that can delay care, and the persistent dangers of poor coordination when patients are discharged. As Shannon Davila of ECRI observed, “Patient safety events are not isolated incidents. They are often products of the system that clinicians and patients operate within, and how that system supports the people it serves.”
Local safety grades show both progress and variation. In fall 2024, 11 Pittsburgh-area hospitals earned an “A” safety grade, while another eleven were rated “C” and two received a “D” grade. Even the city’s most prominent institutions experienced fluctuations, with UPMC Presbyterian moving from an “A” in spring 2024 to a “C” in spring 2025. These shifts illustrate how sustaining improvement requires constant vigilance, investment, and a deeply rooted safety culture.
Yet Pittsburgh’s contribution to the safety conversation goes beyond performance metrics. The city’s institutions are exporting innovations worldwide. Feinstein points to the Jewish Healthcare Foundation’s efforts to adapt models from abroad, such as Australia’s headspace centers for teen mental health and Singapore’s longevity hubs for older adults, which have been localized and piloted in Western Pennsylvania. “We travel the world to find the best solutions to bring home,” she explained. “Our purpose is to spread and sustain what works.” Similarly, UPMC’s Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research has become a global benchmark in immersive training, preparing clinicians to anticipate and manage complex, high-risk situations.
The implications of these efforts stretch well beyond hospital walls. Safer care means fewer complications, shorter recovery times, lower costs, and healthier communities. It strengthens Pittsburgh’s reputation as a healthcare innovation hub and attracts investment, research, and top medical talent. It also reflects the city’s longstanding identity as a place where safety and innovation intersect, from the invention of the polio vaccine to breakthroughs in industrial safety and robotics.
With rigorous reporting systems, a culture of transparency, internationally recognized training centers, and bold leadership voices like Feinstein’s, the city is carving out its place as the safety capital.
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