Sinai Hospital of Baltimore was recently honored by the Mid‑Atlantic Patient Safety Center with its 2026 Distinguished Achievement Award for Patient Safety Innovation.
The award from the independent nonprofit center recognizes Sinai’s hospital‑wide initiative to strengthen safety, enhance care coordination and build a deeply engaged workforce.
The award highlights “Safety by Design: Embedding Team, Quality and Access into Everyday Practice,” a Sinai effort to drive improvements in safe, high‑quality care. The program was created to address such post-pandemic challenges as workforce shifts and widening health disparities.
Sinai Hospital is a 537-bed medical complex in Northwest Baltimore. Founded in 1866 in East Baltimore as the Hebrew Hospital and Asylum, Sinai Hospital is a nonprofit health care organization with a mission of providing high-quality, compassionate patient care. Medical specialties include cardiology, orthopedics, neurology, oncology, rehabilitation and pediatrics.
Sinai is the flagship hospital for the LifeBridge Health system.
“Receiving the Award of Distinction is a meaningful recognition of the dedication our teams show every day to deliver safe, high‑quality care for our community,” said Amy Shlossman, president of Sinai Hospital and Grace Medical Center. “This honor reflects the incredible dedication of our teams across the hospital who came together to strengthen our culture where quality and patient-centered care go hand-in-hand.”
Core components of the “Safety by Design” initiative include:
- Daily huddles identifying operational needs and escalating safety issues;
- Multi-disciplinary service-line deep-dives to identify opportunities and track measurable outcomes;
- Patient flow team to help improve patient access and reduce delays in care;
- New recognition programs and engagement opportunities reinforcing teamwork, communication and feedback loops, and appreciation of the hospital’s workforce.
“What’s remarkable about this initiative is how it involved our teams in every part of the hospital, united in advancing our three key pillars: team, quality and access to care,” said Amanda Shrout, Sinai’s chief nursing officer. “By working together to problem solve, analyze data and transform challenges into actions, we created a culture where safety is embedded into our structures, systems and workflows, and has improved outcomes.”
Since implementing “Safety by Design,” Sinai has made measurable and sustained progress in key quality and operational measures, including improved care coordination, patient flow and employee engagement.
“This work reflects a shift from isolated improvement projects to a unified, system‑level approach to quality and safety,” said Stephanie Peditto, president and CEO of the Mid‑Atlantic Patient Safety Center. “Sinai Hospital has created a model that strengthens care delivery and offers valuable lessons for organizations across the region.”
The initiative has also elevated Sinai’s statewide quality rankings from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, with Sinai most recently earning the highest reward for quality measures in the state.
In addition,Sinai teams earned MPSC’s “Circle of Honor” recognitionfor their entry on “Hardwiring Smoke-Free Surgical Practice to Protect the Perioperative Team and Patients.” The program protects both patients and surgical staff from potentially harmful surgical smoke.
By redesigning workflows and standardizing safer equipment, the team ensured that smoke is now consistently removed during procedures — boosting compliance to more than 95 percent and creating a cleaner, safer environment in every operating room.
This year’s MPSC awardees were selected from nearly 50 submissions and will be honored at the 2026 Mid‑Atlantic Patient Safety Conference in April at the Baltimore Hilton Inner Harbor.
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