Patient Safety

The Definition and Importance of Patient Safety
Studies from The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Government Accountability Office and The Institutes of Medicine show medical errors due to flaws in the way health systems are organized occur at staggering rates and impact millions of patients every year. Besides the impact on patients, these errors cost money, adversely affect the morale of health care workers and compromise the effectiveness of the entire health care system.

Patient safety is the freedom from accidental injury resulting from the medical care received, and improvement in this area is currently one of the Nation's most pressing health care challenges. An enhanced delivery care system must be built to not only learn from mistakes, but also to prevent errors from occurring in the first place. Our Patient Safety work addresses potential areas of patient harm for which there is evidence of ways to promote safety through improved health care processes and systems. Our aim is to reduce adverse patient events caused by system failures, improve communication across the health care continuum, and help create a health care culture in which safety becomes a top priority.

Quality Improvement Organization activities under the Patient Safety Theme will focus on six components: improving inpatient surgical safety and heart failure, reducing rates of pressure ulcers, reducing rates of and use of physical restraints, improving drug safety, reducing rates of health care associated Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections and activities aimed at assisting nursing homes in need .