About This Session
This opening keynote panel brings together leaders from across sectors to surface a shared reality in patient safety: many of today’s most persistent risks cannot be solved within the walls of a single organization. Through a curated, facilitated conversation, panelists will explore where individual efforts are reaching their limits, why harm continues to emerge despite strong safety cultures, and how system-level forces such as design, technology, regulation, supply chains, and workforce pressures shape risk across settings. The discussion will illuminate common patterns that point to ecosystem-level challenges and examine what becomes possible when organizations work together across boundaries. The session will conclude by inviting attendees into collective reflection and action, framing a shift from fixing problems locally to shaping the systems we all operate within, and setting the tone for collaboration throughout the conference.
Learning Objectives
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Analyze why persistent patient safety risks emerge despite strong organizational safety cultures, using examples drawn from design, technology, regulation, supply chains, and workforce pressures.
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Distinguish between problems that can be solved within a single organization and those that require ecosystem-level, cross-boundary collaboration.
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Evaluate opportunities within their own organization to engage in system-level partnerships that address shared patient safety risks.
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Apply a systems-thinking framework to recognize common patterns across patient safety challenges that signal the need for collective action.
Panelists
Stephanie Peditto
President & CEO, Mid-Atlantic Patient Safety Center
Stephanie Peditto has worked nationally and internationally in patient safety and quality for most of her career. She is currently President and CEO of the Maryland Patient Safety Center, where she oversees an organization that convenes the nation’s leading patient safety experts, policymakers, industry innovators, patients and families, organization leaders, and frontline staff from Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region to create a safer, patient-centered future for patients, their families, and their healthcare teams.
She was most recently Senior Director of Quality and Scientific Regulatory Affairs at the College of American Pathologists, where she oversaw and grew their clinical data registry and quality improvement efforts, and created new programmatic opportunities around diagnostic excellence, patient engagement, and health equity via grants from the Moore Foundation and Council of Medical Specialty Societies. Previously, Stephanie was Chief Science, Quality, and Practice Officer at the American Academy of Dermatology. There, she oversaw and grew a clinical data registry and analytics portfolio, and developed new programs in quality and patient safety, practice management, and telemedicine. In her previous 25-year career at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Stephanie led national and international collaborations to build capacity and infrastructure and tools to end preventable harm, improve patient outcomes and experience, and eliminate waste in healthcare.
Martin J. Hatlie, JD
Director for Policy & Advocacy, Patients for Patient Safety US
Martin J. Hatlie, JD, is Director of Advocacy and Policy for Patients for Patient Safety US (PFPS US), which he co-founded in 2021. He is passionate about advancing the roles patients and family caregivers play as patient safety advocates and co-creators of solutions. Hatlie has been active for over 25 years in health system transformation work on research projects and transformation campaigns funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, and Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, among others. He served on the Technical Expert Panel that produced the CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure in 2023. He was Co-PI on the AHRQ project that drafted the Guide to Improving Patient Safety in Primary Care Settings by Engaging Patients and Families (2018) and a consultant in the development of the AHRQ CANDOR (Communication and Optimal Resolution) Toolkit (2016). He is currently on the PFPS US leadership team, developing Project PIVOT (Patients Involved in developing Outcomes Together), a PCORI-funded initiative focused on prioritizing what patients want to report on experiences of patient safety events, missed or delayed diagnoses, and bias.
Raj Ratwani, PhD, MPH
Vice President, Scientific Affairs, MedStar Health, Director, MedStar Health Center for Human Factors in Healthcare
Raj Ratwani, PhD, is Vice President of Scientific Affairs at the MedStar Health Research Institute, Director of the MedStar Health National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, and a Professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is a national leader in patient safety, healthcare technology, and the safe use of artificial intelligence in clinical care. His work focuses on designing systems and digital tools that align with how clinicians and patients actually think and work. Dr. Ratwani’s research has influenced healthcare policy and frontline practice, has been published in leading journals such as JAMA and Health Affairs, and is frequently featured in national media.
Shannon Hoste, MSE, MSM
Founder and Principal Engineer, Hoste Consulting, LLC
Shannon Hoste, MSE, MSM is a Cognitive Systems Engineer dedicated to bridging the gap between the stakeholders who impact patient safety: industry developers, regulators, and healthcare providers. As Chief Scientific Officer for Pathway for Patient Health, she works with students and industry members from across the life sciences to improve practices toward patient-centric quality. As Founder and Principal of Hoste Consulting, she works directly with manufacturer teams to ensure medical products are designed to support safe, effective use in real-world environments.
Over her career, she has championed user-centricity in medical device development processes and has served as a Human Factors Team Lead at the FDA in both CDRH and CDER. There, she oversaw the human factors review of over 600 medical products and helped define standards for error prevention. She leverages this regulatory background to advocate for a unified approach to safety, ensuring that "upstream" design decisions align with "downstream" clinical realities.
Oren Guttman, MD, MBA
System Vice President for Patient Safety, Jefferson Health, Ed Asplundh, Chief Patient Safety and Quality Officer, Jefferson Health Abington, Professor of Anesthesiology & Peri-Operative Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Oren Guttman, MD, MBA, serves as the Jefferson Health System Vice President for Patient Safety at Jefferson Health, a 33-hospital system across Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey. He maintains a clinical commitment as a Professor of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in the application of human factors, design science, and resilience engineering to advance patient safety.
Dr. Guttman is the principal architect of Jefferson Health’s Safety Management System, a pioneering framework that integrates resiliency engineering, applied human factors, and modern safety science into clinical operations. This system earned the ECRI Safety Excellence Award and serves as a foundational piece of the model for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) careOS redesign service line. His work translating human factors and resiliency engineering in healthcare, as a new paradigm to advance patient safety, has been featured in major media outlets, including the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst in Dec 2025, The Wall Street Journal, Becker’s Hospital Review, and Healthcare Tech Outlook.
