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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Standardization has been embraced as a strategy to improve health literacy and to reduce patient misunderstanding of medication instructions. This tool provides standard language that clarifies directions for patients regarding when they should take their medications.

Studies have shown that pharmacist involvement can prevent medication errors. To help patients take their medications safely, this consumer update discusses pharmacists as participants in a government drug information center and reveals the top five questions submitted along with their corresponding answers.

This collection of toolkits provides resources to support safety in ambulatory care and includes information about fall prevention and surgical checklists.

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

This tool evaluates the safety of cancer treatment delivery in hospitals and ambulatory care settings.

This updated AHRQ toolkit provides resources for primary care practices to ensure proper health literacy assessment and to promote greater understanding for all patients. The second edition includes methods to assess written patient education materials for ease of use, simplify the referrals process, and identify barriers to improving health literacy awareness.

This AHRQ-funded publication provides a tool to help organizations identify health literacy issues, as well as methods for implementing an action plan drawn from assessment results.

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) and user guides health care organizations can use to implement the surveys. 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.