System failures require multifactorial assessment to install targeted improvements. This toolkit examines 10 areas of focus for organizations to assess the safety of mental health services in emergency and primary care settings to minimize patient suicide and self-harm. Areas of focus include post-discharge follow-up, admissions, and family engagement.

Examination of diagnostic failure and identification of reduction strategies require multidisciplinary expertise to be successful. This collaborative initiative will initially develop educational materials to inform health care organization adoption of diagnostic improvement best practices. Building on that experience, a survey component to complement the Leapfrog annual survey will be developed to enhance measurement and motivate improvement.

Challenges beset safe care delivery for indigenous peoples. This report examines factors contributing to adverse events in this patient population. Recommendations for improvement include an emphasis on harm monitoring and incident reporting. A related report examines the lack of application of maternity best practices in the Indian Health Service.

The safety of children receiving health care is a recognized challenge. This community provides educational and collaborative opportunities for specialists seeking to improve the safety of pediatric patient populations. It recently expanded its content to include a new section on COVID-19 and Patient Safety.

Efforts to address the opioid epidemic range from regulation to changes in pain management. This safety announcement raises awareness of potential harms associated with rapidly decreasing the dose of or discontinuing opioids for patients who may be physically dependent on the medication. It also announces a requirement regarding changes to prescribing information for opioids to provide expanded guidance on how to safely taper doses. Health care providers should discuss tapering plans with patients and provide ongoing monitoring and support.

Wrong route medication administration is a never event. This report examined the context, organizational and human factors that contributed to the accidental intravenous administration of an oral solution into a pediatric patient. Safety recommendations include medication safety training, standardized administration processes, and elevation of the medication safety officer role. 

Patient safety in ambulatory care is receiving increased attention. This guide includes case studies that explore how Open Notes, team-based care delivery, and patient and family advisory committees have shown promise as patient engagement and safety improvement mechanisms in primary care settings.

Patient safety culture surveys uncover insights into organizational culture and practice areas that require improvement. This selective resource list offers materials for ambulatory surgery centers that seek to implement changes in response to survey results.

The AHRQ Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture, a validated tool for measuring safety culture, was initially released in 2008. This comprehensive national survey of registered nurses, nursing aides, and support staff garnered a high response rate. While respondents rated overall safety perceptions highly, similar to outpatient and hospital safety culture surveys, they expressed concerns about adequacy of staffing, as prior reports of adverse events in nursing homes would suggest. Even though most respondents believed that feedback and communication about safety problems was positive, many did not endorse a nonpunitive response to error. Instead, there was concern about individual blame. As with multiple studies, managers reported a more positive safety climate than frontline staff, suggesting that leadership on safety climate has not changed on-the-ground staff perceptions despite increasing awareness of safety culture. Given that prior work has demonstrated a link between positive safety climate and patient outcomes in nursing homes, it will be critical to address the problems raised in this analysis. A past AHRQ WebM&M commentary discussed the safety and quality of long-term care, and a previous AHRQ WebM&M interview with Nicholas Castle explored unique issues surrounding patient safety in the nursing home population.

The value of current measures to track patient safety has been called into question. This technical report provides information about a consensus-driven initiative to evaluate the reliability of existing patient safety measures in tracking and assessing safety in hospitals, across various populations and settings. The related website offers resources related to the project history.

Infants discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit to home are particularly vulnerable to care coordination errors. This four-component toolkit includes materials to help hospitals implement a coach program to educate providers and families about common communication and health concerns that arise during this transition.

This report outlines the FDA's plans to address drug shortages, including streamlining tracking processes and developing early warning signals to identify potential shortages.

This toolkit provides resources to help augment testing processes in ambulatory care settings, including tools for identifying areas of concern and measuring improvements.

This Web site provides resources associated with the Better Outcomes for Older adults through Safe Transitions project, called Project Boost. This national initiative designed tactics to improve the safety and quality of patient transitions from hospital to home. The program provided hospitals with implementation assistance to use tools in general and specifically for their environments, such as pediatrics.

This toolkit will help hospitals reduce Clostridium difficile infections by developing a stewardship initiative to prevent antimicrobial misuse.

This guide and corresponding TeamStepps module address how to improve care for patients with limited English proficiency.

Analyzing reports of diagnostic errors, this article discusses common causes and provides suggestions for physicians and patients to prevent such events.

These testimonies addressed issues within the Veterans Affairs health system that contributed to recent sterilization and labeling lapses.