The Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Organization Annual Call for Minogue Award Submissions

Each year, the Maryland Patient Safety Center and its Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Organization recognizes and shares the best examples of the region’s healthcare’s efforts to improve patient safety through the prestigious Minogue Award. The 2026 award will bring the region’s healthcare community together to honor innovative initiatives eliminate preventable harm and accelerate improvements in safety and equity to impact quality across healthcare.

We invite you to submit

your organization's
Minogue patient safety innovation
The 2026 submission period is now closed

At MPSC, we believe the future of patient safety depends not on asking individuals to work harder, but on designing systems that make it easier to deliver safe, equitable care. We must shift toward systems that anticipate risk, support the workforce, and are built for resilience.

Too often, when harm (or a near miss) occurs, root cause analyses focus narrowly on frontline decisions or procedural lapses—missing the broader systems and design failures that allow harm to occur. Better RCAs look beyond policies and protocols to ask deeper questions: Why was the task hard to do safely? How did the design of the device, workflow, or environment contribute? Did the event depend on a staff member remembering or perceiving something in a loud/busy/distracted environment? Who was at the table when the solution was developed? The most meaningful safety improvements come when we expand the circle of responsibility—engaging not just clinicians, but also designers, manufacturers, architects, IT, engineers, and administrators in building safer care systems from the ground up.

This year’s Minogue Award seeks submissions that reflect projects that hardwire safe and equitable care into systems solutions that reduce harm not by depending on perfect human performance, but by hard-wiring improvements to technology, processes, environment, and culture.

We invite healthcare organizations across the Mid-Atlantic to submit innovative patient safety initiatives for the 2026 Minogue Award. While all projects that eliminate preventable harm and/or advance health equity will be considered, this year we are especially interested in projects that:

Design safety into systems, processes, environment culture, and technologies

Reduce reliance on individual vigilance or heroism

Expand the ecosystem of safety partners beyond clinical teams

Strengthen the way we identify and respond to root causes of harm

2026 Patient Safety Awards Celebration & Dinner: April 20, 2026

We’re excited to announce that the 2026 Minogue Awards Reception will be bigger, more inclusive, and more celebratory than ever before.

This annual event honors the outstanding achievements of healthcare organizations who are leading the way in patient safety. All categories of Minogue Award winners—from the Minogue Award winner, to the Distinguished Achievement Award and Circle of Honor winners—will be recognized in one uplifting celebration.

A Regional Celebration of Patient Safety Excellence

For the first time, the reception will be open to a broader audience, welcoming not only healthcare leaders and staff, but also partners, supporters, and community members who share in our mission of making care safer for all patients.

Plan to join us for an inspiring evening of recognition, networking, and celebration.

Registration Information

Submissions should focus on efforts to eliminate preventable harm and/or advance equity in patient care. Successful proposals will demonstrate how your work is not only preventing harm and increasing health equity, but reshaping how we understand and solve its root causes.

A Selection Committee will identify recipients for the awards based on an anonymized review. The winners of the Minogue Award for Patient Safety Innovation and the Distinguished Achievement in Patient Safety Innovation Award may be asked to present their solutions at the Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Conference 2025 and/or in the Patient Safety Webinar Series at a mutually agreeable date and time during the months following the annual Patient Safety Conference. All award winners will be honored at a special reception the evening before the annual conference (Monday, April 20, 2026).

We look forward to learning –and sharing–how your work is advancing the future of safe, equitable, and systems-based care.

If you have any questions or need further information, please email: MPSCAwards@marylandpatientsafety.org

Download Submission Guidelines

Submission Guidelines:

Your submission must include the information listed below in order to be considered for one of the awards. In addition, your submission must be in a Word or PDF document in Arial or Times New Roman, 12 pt font, with standard spacing and margins, limited to 5 pages, inclusive of all submission requirements and attachments. The cover page is not included in 5-page limit. New Requirement: Do not include organization or team names in the body of the submission; identifying information should be limited to the cover page of the submission form. Please use this link to submit your project or initiative for an Award.

The submission for a Minogue Patient Safety Innovation Award should be organized using the following sections:

1. Cover page (not included in 5-page limit)

Submission Title:
Name of organization:
Submitter/contact person name/title:
Submitter/contact person email address:
Submitter/contact person phone number:
Executive champion name, title and email address:
Attestation: Include the following language on the cover page: The MPSC may share the name of this organization and information about the project with the review committee, on its website, promotional materials, and press releases as applicable.

2. Executive Summary (limit 500 words)

Include how the project/initiative eliminated preventable harm and/or advanced equity in patient care, and how it hardwired safe and equitable care into systems solutions
Include key takeaways that will support spread/ adaptability by other organizations, specifically noting how safety was “built in,” not just “added on”

3. Project Overview and Safety Challenge

Describe the patient safety challenge addressed
Identify the populations impacted and the setting(s) of care
Include relevant context about why this issue matters at a system level

4. Root Cause Understanding and Innovation

Describe how your team identified underlying contributors to harm
Highlight how the project went beyond surface-level or individual blame to examine deeper system, design, or workflow contributors
Explain what makes the solution innovative or different from standard practice

5. Implementation Approach

Outline the strategies, tools, and stakeholders involved
Note any efforts to include nontraditional safety partners (e.g., device manufacturers, facility designers, IT, vendors, administrators)
Share how safety was “built in,” not just “added on”

6. Impact and Outcomes

Present measurable improvements in patient outcomes, workforce safety, equity, or system resilience
Include baseline and post-implementation data where available

7. Sustainability, Spread, and Replicability

Describe how the project has been sustained over time
Explain how it can be replicated or adapted by other organizations
Indicate alignment with national or statewide patient safety priorities

Submissions are now closed

Important Notes

New Requirement: Do not include organization or team names in the body of the submission; identifying information should be limited to the cover page of the submission form.
Only complete submissions following these guidelines will be considered.
Selected finalists may be invited to present or expand upon their projects as part of the Minogue Awards program.