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This website provides resources for promoting patient safety during Patient Safety Awareness Week. The annual observance is held in March.

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 emergent and primary care settings to minimize patient suicide and self-harm. Areas of focus include post-discharge follow-up, admissions, and family engagement.

This fact sheet provides a list of high-alert medications commonly used in ambulatory care and recommends strategies to reduce risk of errors.

Patient and family engagement is core to effective and safe diagnosis. This new toolkit from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality promotes two strategies to promote meaningful engagement and communication with patients to improve diagnostic safety: (1) a patient note sheet to help patients share their story and symptoms and (2) orientation steps to support clinicians listening and “presence” during care encounters.

The AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey collects information from outpatient providers and staff about the culture of patient safety in their medical offices. The survey is intended for offices with at least three providers, but it also can be used as a tool for smaller offices to stimulate discussion about quality and patient safety issues. The survey is accompanied by a set of resources to support its use. The data submission window for 2021 is now closed.

To protect children and pets from accidental exposure to prescription medications, this consumer alert outlines the dangers of inappropriate storage and disposal of medication skin patches.

Safe diagnosis in medical offices is challenged by staff workload, communication, and poor information sharing. This Supplemental Item Set for the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey (MOSOPS) examines elements contributing to time availability, testing and referrals, and provider and staff communication, and is to be used in conjunction with AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey. The Diagnostic Safety Supplemental Item Set was released in time for the scheduled Fall 2021 MOSOPS data submission.

Voluntary reporting systems collect adverse event data to inform improvement and education efforts. This site provides a platform for physicians and their staff to submit adverse experiences associated with dermatologic surgery equipment, medications or biologics.

The National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports review analysis specific to tracking patient safety challenges and improvements across ambulatory, home health, hospital, and nursing home environments. The most recent Chartbook documented improvements in approximately half of the patient safety measures tracked. This set of tools includes summaries drawn from the reports for use in presentations to enhance distribution and application of the data.

This website provides a report and data repository representing medical offices that administered the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety (SOPS) Culture. Insights on safety culture reflect practices from 1,475 medical offices and more than 18,000 respondents.

Patient safety organizations (PSOs) collect and analyze protected incident data from across the United States. Expert analysis of PSO data can be utilized to inform design and implementation of local initiatives. This brochure provides guidance for health care organizations regarding benefits of working with a PSO and what to consider when choosing one.

Diagnostic error prevention in primary care is a persistent challenge. This AHRQ-funded toolkit provides guidance for ambulatory care organizations that seek to improve the reliability of diagnosis in children. The material focuses on tactics to enhance how practices recognize, track, and follow up on adolescent depression, pediatric elevated blood pressure, and actionable laboratory results.

Data surveillance and transparency are core to measuring and informing improvement efforts. This website provides detailed data that links ambulatory care prescribing activity to National Health Service hospitalizations in an effort to clarify potential adverse medication events. The dashboard launched tracking gastrointestinal bleeding as an indicator of a medication-related adverse result and will expand to other indicators and conditions over time.

Behavioral and mental health patients have unique concerns that affect their safety. This toolkit provides strategies, insights, and research to address vulnerabilities to this patient population. Design interventions to improve the service environment are also available.

Transitions are known to be vulnerable to communication errors. This toolkit focuses on patient transitions between ambulatory care environments and encourages staff to engage patients and families in their care to prevent errors during care transitions.

The opioid crisis is a persisting patient safety problem. One approach to prevent misuse of opioids is to raise awareness of the addictive nature of the medication. This national campaign enlists communities and individual clinicians to provide patient education to address the opioid epidemic. The website offers videos and other resources to assist community-level efforts to reduce risk for opioid addiction.

Ambulatory surgery centers provide care to growing numbers of patients. This toolkit draws from AHRQ's Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program to help ambulatory surgical center teams develop communication and teamwork skills to reduce infections and other iatrogenic harms.

Root cause analysis offers a structured way to detect and address system weaknesses. This workbook illustrates how root cause analysis can be applied to community pharmacy services to identify problems and design an action plan to implement improvement strategies.

Ambulatory surgery centers 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.