A framework for health care organizations to develop and evaluate a safety scorecard.

Tracking progress in patient safety can be challenging despite past descriptions of a framework to do so. In this commentary, Dr. Peter Pronovost and colleagues discuss the increasing pressure to evaluate and improve patient safety and the growing interest in creating safety report cards to publicly report such efforts. The authors warn that measuring safety is still an immature science but offer a conceptual model to guide organizations in developing their safety scorecard and understanding the measures they choose to include. A worksheet is provided that focuses on three questions: Is the measure important?, Is the measure valid?, and Can this measure be used to improve safety in the organization? A past AHRQ WebM&M commentary discussed the unintended consequences of public reporting on quality.