AHRQ Patient Safety Tools and Resources

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers the following tools for healthcare organizations, providers, policymakers, and patients to improve patient safety in healthcare settings. 

The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture examines patient safety culture from a hospital staff perspective and allows hospitals to assess their safety culture and track changes over time. Hospitals that administer the patient safety culture survey can voluntarily submit their data to the Comparative Database, a resource for hospitals wishing to compare their survey results to similar types of hospitals (AHRQ Publication No. 04-0041). 

Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture Comparative Database Reports give benchmark data collected voluntarily from more than 1000 US hospitals. Survey results from these hospitals are averaged over the entire sample by topical composite or individual survey item. Two appendices report the average responses, which are broken down by hospital or respondent characteristics. 

The Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture measures issues relevant to patient safety in the ambulatory medical office setting. Pilot tested in approximately 100 medical offices, the survey lets providers, and staff members to assess their safety culture, identify areas where improvement is needed, track changes in patient safety, and evaluate the effect of interventions. Researchers can also use the survey to assess patient safety culture improvement initiatives (AHRQ Publication No. 08(09)-0059). 

The Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2012 Comparative Database Report presents data from 23,679 staff within 934 US medical offices that completed the Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture, so offices can compare their patient safety culture to other medical offices. The full report contains detailed comparative data for various medical office characteristics (number of providers, specialty, ownership, and region) and staff positions (AHRQ Publication No. 12-0052). 

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Appendix CC AHRQ Patient Safety Tools and Resources... 

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