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Pandemic spotlights the urgent need for a National Patient Safety Board


Thursday 17 September is WHO’s World Patient Safety Day. There’s no better moment in history to call for new legislation that finally ensures health worker and patient safety. Today, the Patient Safety Movement Foundation released a detailed white paper urging the creation of a National Patient Safety Board.

In a statement, the Patient Safety Movement said COVID-19 has exposed the safety gaps in our healthcare system that already cause 200,000 deaths a year and that we must put health workers, and thus patients, first by finally establishing a National Patient Safety Board (NPSB). This would solve the problem in three key ways:

  • Data-driven insight and standards: An NPSB would create and maintain a National Patient Safety Database to receive non-identifiable patient safety work product. The Board would facilitate the reporting, collection, and analysis of patient safety data and the development and dissemination of training guidelines and other recommendations to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety and quality of care.
  • Transparency and accountability: The NPSB would also require an on-going analysis of the patient safety data in the Database and other available data to determine performance and systems standards, tools, and best practices (including peer review) for doctors and other health care providers necessary to prevent medical errors, improve patient safety, and increase accountability within the health care system.
  • Align incentives: An NPSB would save lives and taxpayer dollars by aligning incentives, especially Medicare reimbursements, with proven patient safety protocols.

"COVID-19 shouldn’t be the breaking point for our health workers, but it should be the breaking point for our tolerance of the lack of patient safety. Congress must act today on this bipartisan issue.”

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Source: The Patient Safety Movement, 8 September 2020

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