Quality and Patient Safety

AHRQ's Healthcare-Associated Infections Program

Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP)

Health Literacy

Improving Diagnostic Safety

Diagnostic error is a significant and under-recognized threat to patient safety. AHRQ is funding research to better understand how these errors happen and what can be done to prevent them.

Reducing Hospital-Acquired Conditions

Reducing hospital-acquired conditions is the goal of the Partnership for Patients, a public-private partnership working to improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care. Hospital-acquired conditions cause harm to patients. They are conditions that a patient develops while in the hospital being treated for something else.

Patient and Family Engagement

Whether you see patients at a hospital, primary care office, or other setting, time is often limited and patients and family members who have prioritized their questions or concerns will experience the most meaningful, efficient visits. To help you and your patients get the most out of your time together, AHRQ offers these free resources that you can use with your team and share with your patients.

Patient Safety Measure Tools & Resources

Information about AHRQ efforts to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety.

Pharmacy Health Literacy Center

This site provides pharmacists with recently released health literacy tools and other resources from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

Surveys on Patient Safety Culture

As part of its goal to support a culture of patient safety and quality improvement in the Nation's health care system, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsored the development of patient safety culture assessment tools for hospitals, nursing homes, ambulatory outpatient medical offices, community pharmacies, and ambulatory surgery centers.

Quality Measure Tools & Resources

Quality improvement measurement, tools, and information, including AHRQ Quality Indicators Hospital Toolkit, ambulatory clinical performance measures, and TalkingQuality.

Page last reviewed July 2018
Page originally created January 2013

Internet Citation: Quality and Patient Safety. Content last reviewed July 2018. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/index.html