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Michigan Health & Hospital Association Sets Pace with Patient Safety Organization (PSO) Program

Posted on: Monday, 9 March 2009, 08:08 CDT

ECRI Institute PSO to Provide Patient Safety Reporting and Analysis

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization (PSO) announces the signing of a three-year contract to support the Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA) PSO with patient safety data collection and analysis for the MHA membership. The MHA represents all 144 community hospitals in the state and maintains a strong tradition of successfully advocating on behalf of hospitals and the patients they serve. The MHA PSO is listed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as a certified patient safety organization. ECRI Institute (https://www.ecri.org), an independent nonprofit organization that researches best approaches to improving patient care, has 40 years of experience in operating health care problem reporting systems and safety initiatives.

ECRI Institute PSO will provide "back office" support to the MHA PSO through a Patient Safety Data Collection and Reporting System and by analyzing adverse events and other information from participating hospitals. The reporting platform is powered by rL Solutions (http://www.rl-solutions.com), a leading software company with deep experience in adverse event reporting.

"Michigan hospitals are once again taking proactive actions to identify medical errors and implement health care quality improvement protocols that will prevent the recurrence of errors and ultimately improve patient safety," said MHA President Spencer Johnson. "Without question, Michigan hospitals are leading the nation in promoting voluntary and comprehensive measures to make health care safer."

"We commend MHA's leadership in quickly establishing a program to take advantage of the newly implemented federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 to improve patient safety throughout their state," says Ronni Solomon, executive vice president and general counsel, ECRI Institute. "ECRI Institute's four decades of patient safety experience, plus success in implementing the first state-wide error reporting system for Pennsylvania, makes ECRI Institute PSO ideally suited to support the MHA PSO and other PSOs, such as states, hospital associations, hospital systems, regional patient safety collaboratives, and medical societies," adds Solomon.

To assist MHA-member hospitals in learning from incidents and to improve patient care, ECRI Institute PSO will provide state and national aggregate data, quarterly patient safety advisories, lessons learned from root-cause analyses, help in redesign of systems and processes, and evidence/literature review for best practices/solutions. The MHA PSO is initiating the data collection process with member educational and training forums in March 2009.

ECRI Institute PSO uses a Web-based patient safety reporting system to capture patient safety data in a standardized manner compatible with the AHRQ's common data formats and National Quality Forum (NQF) serious reportable events. The platform, powered by rL Solutions, provides a secure way for ECRI Institute PSO to accept data from providers using any electronic system, along with an intuitive interface for manual entry.

ECRI Institute PSO Plus Membership consists of Web-based reporting tools, powered by rL Solutions, member-specific analytics, assessments, culture-of-safety recommendations, interactive tools, best practices, continuing medical education (CME) courses, and advisories.

The ECRI Institute PSO analytics team, with experience handling more than 1 million adverse event reports, comprises an interdisciplinary staff of physicians; nurses; biomedical engineers; 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, lawyers, and senior executives at hospitals and health care associations.

For information about ECRI Institute PSO support for other PSOs, or PSO Membership, visit pso.ecri.org, e-mail pso@ecri.org, call (610) 825-6000, ext. 5389, or write to us at 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462.

About ECRI Institute

For 40 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. 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, and a Collaborating Center for Patient Safety, Risk Management, and Healthcare Technology by the World Health Organization. ECRI Institute has 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. ECRI Institute PSO is a component of ECRI Institute. For more information, visit https://www.ecri.org.

About the MHA PSO

The MHA PSO is a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve patient safety and quality for all Michigan residents. The MHA PSO collaborates with providers to implement evidence-based best practices that will reduce medical errors and the quality of health care delivery. The MHA PSO is listed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as a certified PSO is the first PSO in Michigan. For more information, visit www.MHAPSO.org.

SOURCE ECRI Institute

Source: PR Newswire

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