Research Activities, October 2011: Announcements: AHRQ releases report on designing consumer reporting systems for patient safety events

Announcements


AHRQ releases report on designing consumer reporting systems for patient safety events

A recent report found little evidence of improvements in patient safety since the publication of the landmark Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System in 1999. The Designing Consumer Reporting Systems for Patient Safety project, funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), was developed to make recommendations for an ideal reporting system that consumers could use to report experiences with patient safety events. The recommendations for key design features of the consumer reporting system were developed by a technical expert panel, with input from consumer focus groups, stakeholder interviews, and an environmental scan and literature review. The technical expert panel made recommendations based on a set of six research questions developed by AHRQ.

The expert panel recommended that the reporting systems should collect information on all types of events, ranging from near-miss and no-harm events to adverse events. The panel also recommended that information collected from consumers should include where a patient safety event occurred; what contributed to the event; whether or to whom an event was reported; what happened when an event was reported; and the impacts or consequences of the event.

To access the report, including all technical expert panel recommendations, please go to http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/consreporting .

Research Activities, October 2011: Announcements: AHRQ releases report on designing consumer reporting systems for patient safety events