Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are increasingly being used to provide surgical care. The AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Ambulatory Surgery Center Survey seeks opinions from the field regarding safety culture in the ambulatory surgical center environment. The survey is presented with additional resources to help organizations assess their safety culture, including the results of a pilot program testing the survey and a user's guide. Voluntary data submission will be open June 1-22 for ASCs that have administered the survey.

Drawing from data reported by the Leapfrog Hospital Survey, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), this website provides grades for hospitals in the United States based on their safety. The Spring 2023 hospital safety grade results, documenting the impact of COVID-19 on patient satisfaction and healthcare associated infection, are available. 

This global initiative raises awareness about hand hygiene as a strategy to reduce health care–associated infections. The initiative includes an annual promotional campaign that takes place on May 5. The theme for 2023 is "Accelerate action together".

Culture has been described as a key to establishing high reliability organizations. The National Quality Forum's Safe Practices for Healthcare and the Leapfrog Group both mandate hospitals to regularly assess their safety culture. This AHRQ Web site provides validated safety culture survey tools (Hospital, Medical Office, Nursing Home, Community Pharmacy, Ambulatory Surgery Center), user guides health care organizations can use to implement the surveys and a bibliography of articles discussing the use of SOPS in the field. Organizations can also use the AHRQ database to compare their Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) results. In addition, reports are available that summarize the benchmarking data across cohorts nationwide. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective discussed how to establish a safety culture.

Effective feedback is an important component of individual, team and organizational learning in order to achieve safe diagnosis. GoodDx.org houses a variety of diagnostic performance feedback resources for use by clinicians, patient safety professionals, educators and patients. The website includes resources targeted towards a multitude of clinical specialties and organizational needs and readiness.

Mismatches of medical device connectors are known factors in therapeutic agent administration failures, despite efforts to redesign equipment and minimize their occurrence. This series of case studies drawn from reports submitted to the Food and Drug Administration illustrates a variety of misconnection scenarios to demonstrate situations that have a range of potential for patient harm.

Patients, families, and providers around the world are affected by medical error. This annual event and its associated materials seek to raise awareness, motivate collaboration, and stimulate innovative work targeting a distinct patient safety theme. The 2023 theme is “Engaging Patients for Patient Safety". with the slogan “Elevate the voice of patients!” Explicit objectives of the effort include increasing awareness worldwide of the importance of active patient and family engagement in safe care and policy maker advocacy for robust patients and families roles in safety efforts.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are a persistent challenge in hospitals. This project will support the implementation of targeted hospital-acquired infection prevention initiatives building on the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) concept. The cohort that is focused on long-term care is currently recruiting participants. 

Telemedicine efforts harbor both risk and reward to patients and providers. The AHRQ Safety Program for Telemedicine is a national effort to develop and implement a bundle of evidence-based interventions designed to improve telemedicine care in two settings—the cancer diagnostic process and antibiotic use. To test the bundle of interventions, the program will involve two cohorts of healthcare professionals who utilize telemedicine as a care delivery model. It is an 18-month program, beginning in June 2023, that seeks to improve the cancer diagnostic process for patients who receive some or all of their care through telemedicine. Recruitment webinars start in late January and run through early May 2023; the antibiotic use cohort will begin recruitment in December 2023. 

This website provides resources for promoting patient safety during Patient Safety Awareness Week. The 2023 observance will be held March 12-18. 

The National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) are one of the major methods by which The Joint Commission establishes standards for ensuring patient safety in all health care settings. In order to ensure health care facilities focus on preventing major sources of patient harm, The Joint Commission regularly revises the NPSGs based on their impact, cost, and effectiveness. Major focus areas include promoting surgical safety and preventing hospital-acquired infections, medication errors, inpatient suicide, and specific clinical harms such as falls and pressure ulcers. The 2023 goals, which include a goal to improve health equity, are now available.

Systemic efforts to improve health equity support patient safety. This announcement highlights an initiative for collective work to address four areas of effort to reduce inequity in health care: access, workforce, social and structural drivers, and quality and safety.

After a patient safety incident, effective discussions are critical for healing and improvement. This website houses collections of materials to support constructive communication should a failure or near-miss occur. There are two distinct sections of materials: one for established healthcare professionals, and another for patients, students, and caregivers.

Independent investigations examine system weaknesses in health care to inform improvement, reduce risk, and prevent harm. This organization collects information from individuals, groups, and organizations to identify and analyze incidents of substandard care and to proactively provide recommendations to reduce conditions that perpetuate failure in the National Health Service. Investigation areas include medication delivery for older patients and safe maternity care.

The large system change required to reduce patient harm requires multi-stakeholder engagement and sustained commitment. This alliance will work with healthcare systems, federal partners, patients and families, and other stakeholders to implement a national plan to ensure the safety of patients and healthcare workers. The webinar introducing the program, featuring Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, was held November 14, 2022.

This website provides access to an annual report that summarizes National Health Service hospital and social care performance across a range of care quality metrics at both the trust and service level. The 2022 report found most facilities to be generally operating at a effective level and basic performance was found to be high. However the report found substantial gaps in specialties such as maternity care and recognized staffing challenges that impact access and quality.

This redesigned Web site provides information about drug safety alerts and allows consumers to help report and prevent medication errors.

Effective response to medical error requires a comprehensive systemic and process-focused incident examination approach to ensure organizational learning. This framework will replace the current method used by the UK National Health Service (NHS) to support overarching patient safety strategic aims for the agency.

This site provides promotional materials for an annual awareness campaign on patient safety that takes place in the autumn. The annual observance is held in late October.

The Eisenberg Award honors individuals and organizations who have made key contributions to patient safety and quality improvement. The awards are presented at the National Quality Forum's annual policy conference in Washington, DC. This website provides information on all the recipients and the application process. The process for submitting an application for the 2023 award cycle will open in the summer.