The Patient Safety Authority (PSA) released its 2021 annual report, highlighting the agency’s expansion of education and reporting efforts to improve patient safety throughout the Commonwealth.
Among the 2021 accomplishments is a new internet-based patient safety Learning Management System (LMS) which is free to access and offers continuing education credits to Pennsylvania nurses.
PSA also added mandatory demographics questions to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS), including race, ethnicity, sex assigned at birth, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ZIP code.
“PSA’s vision—safe healthcare for all patients—cannot be fulfilled without evaluating and addressing disparities,” said Regina Hoffman, executive director of the PSA. “Being inclusive and identifying important patient safety issues affecting specific populations are essential.”
Other key accomplishments in 2021 include development of a comprehensive assessment tool to measure organizational maturity across key domains of diagnostic excellence. The tool will be piloted among select Pennsylvania hospitals in 2022. PSA also grew global readership of its award-winning journal, PATIENT SAFETY. The publication includes original scientific research and patient commentaries to advise healthcare systems, researchers, and frontline staff. It was read by more than 50,000 people in 165 countries.
In conjunction with the Annual Report, the PSA released its annual data articles—an aggregate review of trends in PA-PSRS—the largest repository of patient safety data in the United States and one of the largest in the world with 4 million reports. Access them here.
Established under the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act of 2002, the PSA, an independent state agency, collects and analyzes patient safety data to improve safety outcomes and help prevent patient harm.
