Southern District Health Board chief executive Carole Heatly has been appointed to the advisory group of a national patient safety campaign.
The Health Quality and Safety Commission (HQSC) wants to reduce death and injury in four areas - surgery, falls, health care-acquired infections, and medication errors.
The campaign will be launched early next year, aimed at health workers and the public.
Ms Heatly is the only district health board chief executive on the HQSC-appointed advisory group, which includes medical, nursing, and allied health representatives from throughout New Zealand.
A National Health Service executive in England before she moved to Dunedin this year, Ms Heatly said health care safety initiatives had been a more high-profile part of Britain's health care scene.
With its bigger population, problems like health care-acquired infections were more common there, and led to high-profile campaigns for health care professionals to wash their hands, Ms Heatly said.
In some areas, however, it was likely New Zealand, with its small population, was ahead of Britain in health safety.
She looked forward to using lessons garnered from the advisory group to benefit the South.
Unlike its medical and nursing members, she could provide the group with a "helicopter view" of the health system.
Initially focused on hospitals, the campaign would broaden its scope to the community sector, the commission said in an information sheet.
Regular reporting of health safety measures, which were still being confirmed, would start from June 2013.
"Serious and sentinel" health care events, released each year by the commission broken down by district health board, were evidence too many New Zealanders were harmed by the health system, the information sheet said.
The next annual serious and sentinel events report will be released on November 21.
HQSC chief executive Dr Janice Wilson said the advisory group would direct the national patient safety campaign.
