where do i report for the patient safety

by Nicolette Huel 8 min read

Report a Patient Safety Concern or File a Complaint

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Patient Safety Reporting (PSR) gives military treatment facility personnel the ability to anonymously report medical events that impact the safety of patients.

The public may contact the Joint Commission's Office of Quality Monitoring to report any concern or make a complaint about a health care facility that is accredited by the Joint Commission by calling (800) 994-6610 or emailing: complaint@jointcommission.org.

Full Answer

How do I report patient safety concerns or compliance?

For urgent patient safety concerns, contact your supervisor. Use departmental chain of command for assistance. For compliance questions, please call 1-844-SPEAK2US (1-844-773-2528) Report event in HERO (Hopkins Event Reporting Online). For unresolved concerns, call the Safety Hotline at 410-955-5000.

How do I report safety concerns in the workplace?

To report any safety concerns, please use the following tips: For immediate hazards, call existing emergency phone numbers. For urgent patient safety concerns, contact your supervisor. Use departmental chain of command for assistance. Report event in HERO (Hopkins Event Reporting Online).

What is the difference between patient safety event reporting and incident reporting?

Patient safety event reporting systems are ubiquitous in hospitals and are a mainstay of efforts to detect patient safety events and quality problems. Incident reporting is frequently used as a general term for all voluntary patient safety event reporting systems, which rely on those involved in events to provide detailed information.

How do I report a hospital infection?

Clinicians are often legally required to report specific diseases, including some hospital infections, to their local (city) Department of Public Health which will accept the report, conduct an investigation, possibly complete laboratory testing and make recommendations to control an outbreak or improve patient safety.

What agency is responsible for patient safety?

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights is responsible for the confidentiality protections of the Patient Safety Act.

What is patient safety reporting?

The Patient Safety Reporting System (PSRS) is a non-punitive, confidential, and voluntary program which collects and analyzes safety reports submitted by healthcare personnel. Staff can report close calls, suggestions, and incident / event related information and data to improve patient safety.

How do you report a patient event or a safety hazard in the environment?

Dial the Hotline (310) 825-9797 Follow the instructions by the voice operator and choose from the menu. A manager on call will respond based on the type of incident.

What is the required reporting timeline for reporting patient safety events?

within 24 hoursTo date, hospitals have been required to report an adverse event that is an ongoing urgent or emergent threat to the welfare, health, or safety of patients, personnel, or visitors within 24 hours.

How do I report an incident in healthcare?

Information required on an incident reporting formPatient name and hospital number/date of birth.Date and time of incident.Location of incident.Brief, factual description of incident.Name and contact details of any witnesses.Harm caused, if any.Action taken at the time.More items...

What is the process of reporting an incident?

Incident reporting is the process of recording worksite events, including near misses, injuries, and accidents. It entails documenting all the facts related to incidents in the workplace. Incidents are generally accidents or events that cause injuries to workers or damages to property or equipment.

What is the name of the system where incident reporting has to be done?

Incident Reporting Systems (IRS) are and will continue to be an important influence on improving patient safety. They can provide valuable insights into how and why patients can be harmed at the organizational level. However, they are not the panacea that many believe them to be.

What is reporting in hospital?

What Is Healthcare Reporting? Healthcare reports are a data-driven means of benchmarking the performance of specific processes or functions within a healthcare institution, with the primary aim of increasing efficiency, reducing errors, and optimizing metrics.

How are incident reports used to maintain quality and safety in the clinical setting for the patients and the staff that provide care?

Done well, it identifies safety hazards and guides the development of interventions to mitigate risks, thereby reducing harm. Incident reports help staff identify and change the individual or system-level factors contributing to medical errors.

When should an incident report be completed?

Incident reporting is the process of documenting all worksite injuries, near misses, and accidents. An incident report should be completed at the time an incident occurs no matter how minor an injury is.

Why must a SI report be?

It is important that any incident suspected as a SI is notified to the Patient Safety Team as soon as possible. The notification ensures communication of incidents and the mobilisation of help and support. Even when it is decided an incident is not a SI the notification can be very valuable.

What should be documented in the safety event report for this patient?

Filling Out an Effective Incident Report Include the full names of those involved and any witnesses, as well as any information you have about how, or if, they were affected. Add other relevant details, such as your immediate response—calling for help, for example, and notifying the patient's physician.

What is patient safety event reporting?

Patient safety event reporting systems are ubiquito us in hospitals and are a mainstay of efforts to detect patient safety events and quality problems. Incident reporting is frequently used as a general term for all voluntary patient safety event reporting systems, which rely on those involved in events to provide detailed information. Initial reports often come from the frontline personnel directly involved in an event or the actions leading up to it (e.g., the nurse, pharmacist, or physician caring for a patient when a medication error occurred), rather than management or patient safety professionals. Voluntary event reporting is therefore a passive form of surveillance for near misses or unsafe conditions, in contrast to more active methods of surveillance such as direct observation of providers or chart review using trigger tools. The Patient Safety Primer Detection of Safety Hazards provides a detailed discussion of other methods of identifying errors and latent safety problems.

How is event reporting used in health care?

A 2016 article contrasted event reporting in health care with event reporting in other high-risk industries (such as aviation), pointing out that event reporting systems in health care have placed too much emphasis on collecting reports instead of learning from the events that have been reported. Event reporting systems are best used as a way of identifying issues that require further, more detailed investigation. While event reporting utilization can be a marker of a positive safety culture within an organization, organizations should resist the temptation to encourage event reporting without a concrete plan for following up on reported events. A PSNet perspective described a framework for incorporating voluntary event reports into a cohesive plan for improving safety. The framework emphasizes analysis of the events and documenting process improvements arising from event analysis, rather than encouraging event reporting for its own sake.

What is the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act?

The legislation provides confidentiality and privilege protections for patient safety information when health care providers work with new expert entities known as Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs). Health care providers may choose to work with a PSO and specify the scope and volume of patient safety information to share with a PSO. Because health care providers can set limits on the ability of PSOs to use and share their information, this system does not follow the pattern of traditional voluntary reporting systems. However, health care providers and PSOs may aggregate patient safety event information on a voluntary basis, and AHRQ will establish a network of patient safety databases that can receive and aggregate nonidentifiable data that are submitted voluntarily. AHRQ has also developed Common Formats —standardized definitions and reporting formats for patient safety events—in order to facilitate aggregation of patient safety information. Since their initial release in 2009, the Common Formats have been updated and expanded to cover a broad range of safety events.

Why are event reports limited?

The spectrum of reported events is limited, in part due to the fact that physicians generally do not utilize voluntary event reporting systems.

Is there a voluntary event reporting system?

Voluntary event reporting systems need not be confined to a single hospital or organization. The United Kingdom's National Patient Safety Agency maintains the National Reporting and Learning System, a nationwide voluntary event reporting system, and the MEDMARX voluntary medication error reporting system in the U.S.

About Patient Safety Confidentiality

OCR enforces the confidentiality provisions of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (Patient Safety Act) and the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Rule (Patient Safety Rule).

What is PSWP?

Assembled or developed by a health care provider for reporting to a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) that is listed by the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and is documented as being within the provider’s patient safety evaluation system for reporting to a PSO

Complaint Requirements

Anyone can file a patient safety confidentiality complaint. If you believe that a person or organization shared PSWP, you may file a complaint with OCR. Your complaint must:

File a Patient Safety Confidentiality Complaint

File a Complaint Using the Patient Safety Confidentiality Complaint Form Package

How OCR Investigates Your Complaint

OCR will investigate complaints that allege potential violations of the Rule. To the extent practicable, OCR will provide technical assistance and seek informal resolution of complaints involving the inappropriate sharing of PSWP through voluntary compliance from the responsible person, entity, or organization.

How many cases of venous thromboembolism are there in the world?

Venous thromboembolism (blood clots) is one of the most common and preventable causes of patient harm, contributing to one third of the complications attributed to hospitalization. Annually , there are an estimated 3.9 million cases in high-income countries and 6 million cases in low- and middle-income countries (19).

What is the WHO patient safety and risk management unit?

The Patient Safety and Risk Management unit at WHO has been instrumental in advancing and shaping the patient safety agenda globally by focusing on driving improvements in some key strategic areas through:

Why do millions of people die every year?

Every year, millions of patients suffer injuries or die because of unsafe and poor-quality health care. Many medical practices and risks associated with health care are emerging as major challenges for patient safety and contribute significantly to the burden of harm due to unsafe care.

How many people die from sepsis in the world?

Sepsis is frequently not diagnosed early enough to save a patient’s life. Because these infections are often resistant to antibiotics, they can rapidly lead to deteriorating clinical conditions, affecting an estimated 31 million people worldwide and causing over 5 million deaths per year (18).

What is patient safety?

Patient Safety is a health care discipline that emerged with the evolving complexity in health care systems and the resulting rise of patient harm in health care facilities. It aims to prevent and reduce risks, errors and harm that occur to patients during provision of health care.

Why is patient safety important?

Patient safety is fundamental to delivering quality essential health services. Indeed, there is a clear consensus that quality health services across the world should be effective, safe and people-centred. In addition, to realize the benefits of quality health care, health services must be timely, equitable, integrated and efficient.

When did WHO start working on patient safety?

WHO's work on patient safety began with the launch of the World Alliance for Patient Safety in 2004 and this work has continued to evolve over time. WHO has facilitated improvements in the safety of health care within Member States through establishment of Global Patient Safety Challenges.

What is a NPP mismanagement?

If you believe you have experienced mismanagement by a Non-Physician Practitioner (NPP: a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant), don’t be silent about it. Many people consider reporting mismanagement if it leads to harm, which makes sense. However, there is another type of mismanagement, called a “near miss”.

What is the term for mismanagement that could have harmed you but didn't?

However, there is another type of mismanagement, called a “near miss”. A “near miss” is an event that could have harmed you, but didn’t. It is important that both types of mismanagement are reported: those that caused harm and those that could have caused harm.

Where to file a patient safety event?

You can file this report by going to www.jointcommission.org, and using the “Report a Patient Safety Event” link in the “Action Center” of the homepage. You can also file by fax to 630-792-5636.

Does CVS have a notice of patient rights?

Every CVS MinuteClinic should provide you with a Notice of Patient Rights or at least have one posted and available to you. This notice states that you have the right to be informed of the procedure for submitting a complaint about MinuteClinic and/or the quality of care you have received.

Do insurance companies pay for more testing?

Insurance companies (and you!) pay more for more testing, more labs, more imaging, and more referrals, and you pay for more a missed diagnosis or a misdiagnosis. Insurance companies will care if they’re spending more than they should, and they may change who they will credential to treat patients within their system.

Do insurance companies care about spending more than they should?

Insurance companies will care if they’re spending more than they should, and they may change who they will credential to treat patients within their systems. REPORTING WITHIN A HOSPITAL OR HOSPITAL-OWNED SYSTEM: Report to the Patient Advocate.

What are some examples of quality of care complaints?

Some common examples of quality of care complaints include: Receiving the wrong medication in a hospital or skilled nursing facility (SNF) Receiving unnecessary surgery/diagnostic testing. Receiving an overdose of medication. Experiencing a delay in service. Receiving inadequate care or treatment by a Medicare hospital or doctor.

What is the Joint Commission?

The Joint Commission – formerly called the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, or JCAHO—is a private, non-profit group that acts as a national accrediting organization for a great number of hospitals in the country.

What is the role of the state health department?

State Health Departments. Each state has a Department of Public Health that works to ensure the health and safety of its residents. Clinicians are often legally required to report specific diseases, including some hospital infections, to their local (city) Department of Public Health which will accept the report, conduct an investigation, ...

Does Medicare have a complaint right?

Every Medicare beneficiary has the right to file a complaint, or to register a concern about their health care or health care provider. Patients and their advocates should realize that they have this right and know how to reach the entity that can take action on their complaints.

Background

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Patient safety event reporting systems are ubiquitous in hospitals and are a mainstay of efforts to detect patient safety events and quality problems. Incident reporting is frequently used as a general term for all voluntary patient safety event reporting systems, which rely on those involved in events to provide detailed infor…
See more on psnet.ahrq.gov

Characteristics of Incident Reporting Systems

  • An effective event reporting system should have four key attributes: While traditional event reporting systems have been paper based, technological enhancements have allowed the development of Web-based systems and systems that can receive information from electronic medical records. Specialized systems have also been developed for specific settings, such as th…
See more on psnet.ahrq.gov

Limitations of Event Reporting

  • The limitations of voluntary event reporting systems have been well documented. Event reports are subject to selection bias due to their voluntary nature. Compared with medical record review and direct observation, event reports capture only a fraction of events and may not reliably identify serious events. The spectrum of reported events is limited, in part due to the fact that ph…
See more on psnet.ahrq.gov

Using Event Reports to Improve Safety

  • A 2016 article contrasted event reporting in health care with event reporting in other high-risk industries (such as aviation), pointing out that event reporting systems in health care have placed too much emphasis on collecting reports instead of learning from the events that have been reported. Event reporting systems are best used as a way of identifying issues that require furth…
See more on psnet.ahrq.gov

Current Context

  • At the national level, regulations implementing the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act became effective on January 19, 2009. The legislation provides confidentiality and privilege protections for patient safety information when health care providers work with new expert entities known as Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs). Health care providers may choose to wo…
See more on psnet.ahrq.gov