Databases comparative patient safety

Sorra, J., Famolaro, T., Dyer, N., Nelson, D. andKhanna, K. 2009. Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2009 Comparative Database Report. Agency for Healthcare Research and CJrrality, AHRQ Ptrblication No. 09-0030, Rockville, MD. 

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ 2012). 2012 User Comparative Database Report Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture. AHRQ, Rockville, MD. Available at http //www.ahrq.gov/qual/hospsurveyl2/ (last accessed on 14 June 2013). 

The comparative database has been a tremendous lesomee for irrformation about patient safety culture in US hospitals. Hospital de-identified data from the database has been made available to researchers. In addition, hospital-identifiable data has been made available to researchers interested in linking patient safety culture to other measiues of quality and safety. Research proposals requesting identifiable data have to be approved by both AHRQ and hospitals that submit data to the database. 

Once hospitals use the survey to identify areas for improvement, their next step is to work out what they can do, what actions they can take, to improve patient safety culture. A resource list describing dozens of patient safety initiatives is available to survey users on the AHRQ web site, but hospitals still have to identify what will be effective and which initiatives are likely to be successful in their facilities. For the Hospital SOPS 2011 Comparative Database (Sorra et al. 2008), we asked 456 trending hospitals what types of patient safety initiatives they had implemented between survey assessments. The top five initiatives are shown in Table 12.2. 

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 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). 

The Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2011 User Comparative Database Report is based on data from 226 nursing homes in the United States and provides initial results that nursing homes can use to compare their patient safety culture to other US nursing homes. The report consists of a narrative description of the findings and four appendices presenting data by nursing home characteristics and respondent characteristics (AHRQ Publication No. 11-0030). 

The Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2012 Comparative Database Report... 

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