Patient Reporting of Safety Events Feasible, Prototype Shows

An AHRQ-funded contract to develop and pilot test a prototype for capturing patient-reported patient safety events has demonstrated that such a system is challenging but feasible. Researchers were able to capture information on safety events from the patient and family perspective – a viewpoint that has previously been unavailable to hospitals and others. Most patient safety event reporting systems capture information from the clinician or provider perspective. Including the patient perspective gives patient safety experts a more complete understanding of the event that happened. The Health Care Safety Hotline was developed and implemented in two hospital systems over 15 months. A total of 37 reports were successfully submitted by patients.

Read more:

• Developing and Testing the Health Care Safety Hotline: A Prototype Consumer Reporting System for Patient Safety Events: Contract Final Report. AHRQ
• Blog post: Pilot Testing Patient Reporting of Safety Events from the Patient and Family Perspective