Race differences in reported harmful patient safety events in healthcare system high reliability organisations (December 2018)

Summary

The aim of the study, published in the Journal of Patient Safety, was to determine whether race differences exist in voluntarily reported harmful patient safety events in a large 10 hospital healthcare system on a high reliability organisation journey.

Findings showed that race differences in harmful events exist in voluntary reporting systems by type and by hospital setting. Healthcare organisations, particularly healthcare high reliability organisations, can use these findings to help identify areas of further study and investigation. Further study and investigation should include efforts to understand the root cause of the differences found in this study, including the role of reporting bias.