Webinar Recording Now Available: Understanding CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure Requirements

Hospitals can earn points toward the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) by meeting criteria across five domains, including Domain 3: Culture of Safety and Learning Health Systems. In a recent webinar, CMS and AHRQ experts explained that AHRQ’s Surveys on Patient Safety Culture® (SOPS®) Hospital Survey and shorter pulse surveys can help meet these requirements. Hospitals must attest “Yes” to all five Domain 3 statements—such as conducting validated safety culture surveys annually (or alternating between pulse and full surveys each year) and benchmarking patient safety metrics—to earn the point. During the Q&A, presenters clarified that surveys must include a patient safety culture component, hospitals can add supplemental questions, there is an option to use a Hospital SOPS (or other) pulse survey in alternating years, and attestation does not require data submission to AHRQ. https://www.ahrq.gov/sops/events/webinars/sops-pssm-hospital-070825.html