Patient Safety Update: AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network Offers Primer on Efforts to Prevent "Never Events"

Patient Safety Update: AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network Offers Primer on Efforts to Prevent "Never Events"

Patient Safety Update: AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network Offers Primer on Efforts to Prevent "Never Events"

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sent this bulletin at 08/20/2013 02:32 PM EDT

Health care organizations are under increasing pressure to eliminate "Never Events," which are medical errors such as wrong-site surgery that should never have occurred.  Though they rarely occur, these 29 events may indicate fundamental safety problems within a health care organization. AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) offers a primer that describes these events, which of them are most commonly reported, and current national efforts to encourage health care organizations to report, analyze and disclose such errors in order to improve quality. 

To access the full patient safety primer titled "Never Events" go to: http://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer.aspx?primerID=3