What is a PSO?
A Patient Safety Organization (PSO) collects, aggregates, and analyzes confidential information reported by health care providers. The goal of a PSO is to improve patient safety by encouraging voluntary and confidential reporting of events that adversely affect patients.
PSOs were formed by the The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-41). This was enacted in response to growing concern about patient safety in the United States and the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System which identified that up to 94,000 deaths and one million injuries occur each year due to preventable medical errors.
Benefits of forming or joining a PSO
Legal protection. Many providers fear that patient safety event reports could be used against them in medical malpractice cases or in disciplinary proceedings. The Act addresses these fears by providing Federal legal privilege and confidentiality protections to information that is assembled and reported by providers to a PSO or developed by a PSO as patient safety work product (PSWP) for the conduct of patient safety activities. The Act also significantly limits the use of this information in criminal, civil, and administrative proceedings.
Better prevention. PSOs will be able to identify patterns of failures and propose measures to eliminate patient safety risks and hazards by analyzing patient safety event information.
Better understanding. Currently, patient safety improvement efforts are hampered by the fear of discovery of peer deliberations, resulting in under-reporting of events and an inability to aggregate sufficient patient safety event data for analysis.
Solutions from PSO Services Group
For providers, we can help you establish your own PSO or you may submit data to our PSO. PSO Services group is a chartered PSO.
For existing PSOs, we can provide the techonology and expertise to operate successfully.
Requirements for PSOs
• Preserve and protect "patient safety work product" provided by member healthcare organizations, or face monetary penalties for violations
• Provide a "patient safety evaluation system," which allows patient safety event information to be collected, developed, analyzed, and maintained
• Work with two or more healthcare providers
• Must not be an insurance company or affiliated company
• Submit patient safety data to the Network of Patient Safety Databases (NPSD) to provide an interactive, evidence-based management resource for providers, PSOs, and other entities. This will be used to analyze national and regional statistics, including trends and patterns of patient safety events. The NPSD will employ common formats (definitions, data elements, and so on) and will promote interoperability among reporting systems.