California Hospital Patient Safety Organization Selects ECRI Institute PSO for Patient Safety Services

Program designed to improve safety and quality in California hospitals

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Feb. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization announces an agreement to provide patient safety services to the California Hospital Patient Safety Organization (CHPSO). ECRI Institute PSO will support CHPSO with a patient safety data collection and reporting system and by analyzing adverse events and other information from participating hospitals and health systems.

The California Hospital Patient Safety Organization is one of the largest organizations dedicated to patient safety in the nation. More than half of all California hospitals have joined in this quest to eliminate preventable patient harm.

"Our new partnership with ECRI Institute will help expedite patient safety data collection and analysis," says Rory Jaffe, M.D., executive director of CHPSO. "Members will benefit from ECRI's extensive experience with health care reporting systems and safety initiatives, allowing California hospitals to accelerate learning from near misses and adverse events."

"We commend the California Hospital Patient Safety Organization for taking a strong leadership role in improving patient safety through the sharing of data. We look forward to providing the analyses and data to help them learn from and reduce adverse events," says Ronni Solomon, JD, executive vice president and general counsel, ECRI Institute.

The ECRI Institute Patient Safety analytics team, with experience handling more than 1.5 million adverse event reports, comprises an interdisciplinary staff of physicians, nurses, biomedical engineers, and instructional designers; quality, legal, and risk management professionals; individuals with safety, education, science, and engineering backgrounds; statisticians and data analysts, and information technology experts. In addition to the internal program team, the external advisory group includes physicians, nurses, lawyers, and senior executives at hospitals and health care associations.

ECRI Institute PSO uses a web-based patient safety collection and reporting system to capture patient safety data in a standardized manner compatible with the common data formats published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and National Quality Forum (NQF) serious reportable events. ECRI Institute PSO supports numerous state-based PSO programs as well as hospitals, health systems, and other provider organizations nationwide.

For information about the ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization, visit pso.ecri.org, e-mail [email protected], call (610) 825-6000, ext. 5389, or write to us at 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462.

About CHPSO
The California Hospital Patient Safety Organization is one of the largest organizations dedicated to patient safety in the nation. CHPSO confidentially collects and analyzes patient safety data, develops and shares best practices, and helps individual hospitals accelerate safety improvement. More than half of all California hospitals have joined in this quest to eliminate preventable patient harm. CHPSO collaborates closely with the California Hospital Association and California's Regional Hospital Associations to ensure an integrated approach. It also maintains close alliances with other statewide PSOs, quality and safety agencies, research institutes and think tanks. As a result, members gain unprecedented access to the collective intelligence of patient safety experts and innovators.

About ECRI Institute
For 43 years, ECRI Institute's work in patient safety, adverse event reporting and analysis, and development of recommendations has improved patient care at hospitals and other providers around the world. The ECRI Institute PSO—Patient Safety Organization—is a component of ECRI Institute, a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization dedicated to improving the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of patient care. ECRI Institute has a long history of investigating events and publishing authoritative risk reduction strategies. ECRI Institute is designated as an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ECRI Institute developed and implements the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System, a mandatory error and near-miss reporting program for Pennsylvania hospitals and other health care facilities, under contract to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, winner of the 2006 John M. Eisenberg Award. For more information, visit https://www.ecri.org. Find ECRI Institute on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ECRIInstitute) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/ECRI_Institute).

SOURCE ECRI Institute