Health disparities and unequal care contribute to patient and family harm. This 3-component workshop series explored ethnic and racial disparities in health care. A planned September workshop will revisit the findings from the three sessions.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers many practical tools and resources to help healthcare organizations, providers, and others make patient care safer These tools are based on research, and they can assist staff in hospitals, emergency departments, long-term care facilities, and ambulatory settings to prevent avoidable complications of care. The purpose of this challenge is to elicit new narratives of how AHRQ toolkits are being used. Up to ten winners will receive $10,000 each. Submissions are due October 27, 2023.

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.

Implicit bias is progressively being discussed as a detractor to safe health care by fostering racial and ethnic inequities. This review examines the history of health inequities at the patient, provider, health care system, and cultural levels in obstetric and gynecologic care. It shares actions documented in the evidence base for application in health care to reduce the impact of implicit bias, with an eye toward maternal care

Burnout reduction in primary care is critical to patient safety. This resource is designed to help practices assess the causes of burnout in primary care and implement strategies to promote well-being. Suggested areas of focus include the reduction of documentation tasks, use of huddles and peer support.

Collective engagement and focus are required to attain large system change. This plan centers on five goals to improve patient safety in Massachusetts: leadership and culture, operations and engagement, patient and family support, workforce wellbeing, and measurement and transparency. The document provides guidance for implementation of strategies targeting each goal to generate sustainable improvements.

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.

Structural racism and implicit biases can lead to poor quality of care and adverse outcomes among Black women. This article describes the experience of a Black OB/GYN patient whose concerns about abdominal pain during her pregnancy were not thoroughly evaluated; clinicians also missed risk factors placing her at risk of spontaneous preterm birth.