CCHR is responsible for helping to enact more than 180 laws protecting individuals from abusive or coercive practices. CCHR has long fought to restore basic inalienable human rights to the field of mental health, including, but not limited to, full informed consent regarding the medical legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis, the risks of psychiatric treatments, the right to all available medical alternatives and the right to refuse any treatment considered harmful.

The Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights is found online at https://www.cchr.org/about-us/mental-health-declaration-of-human-rights.html. Under the banner of the Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, tens of thousands of people around the globe have joined CCHR and taken to the streets to protest psychiatric drugging and other inhumane mental health practices.

Find out more about CCHR and its work to investigate and expose psychiatric fraud and abuse.

• Enhance federal leadership and prioritization of patient and workforce safety;
• Increase adoption of evidence-based practices for preventing harm and addressing risks;
• Partner with patients and other stakeholders to address disparities and increase transparency; and
• Accelerate research and deployment of technologies to spur innovation and quality improvement. 

Read the article in full via the link below.

• Supervising authorised health professionals and health organisations. 
• Providing guidance on communicable diseases, health conditions relevant to driving license issuance, and conducting investigations, among others.
• Granting registrations in 19 different healthcare professions to both Danish and foreign healthcare professionals.
• Issuing permissions for independent practice as a medical doctor, dentist, or chiropractor.
• Granting specialist registrations in 39 medical specialties and specialist registrations in the two dental specialties.
• Managing the central administration of the adverse event reporting system in the healthcare sector and utilizing knowledge from adverse events and patient compensation cases to prevent similar incidents.
• Offering advice on the entitlement to medical assistance in other countries based on Danish legislation, EU regulations, and other international agreements.

• Implemented new tools and processes to enhance the monitoring, review, and analysis of Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) data, including state-of-the-art modeling techniques using artificial intelligence along with statistical testing.
• Worked with facilities to improve event reporting and investigation, including a Keystone webinar series focused on identifying causes and contributing factors of safety events and actions that can minimize the risk of future harm.
• Created a searchable microsite of stories of events that inspired people to make changes that improved patient care and safety at their facility and beyond.
• Published a free handbook to foster better communication between patients and healthcare providers, and help patients take a more active and effective role in their own care.

There are 17 validated tools available in the white paper that could be used by hospitals. CAHO are in the process of doing baseline studies. If you wish to be part of PREM tool development please email office@caho.in

• The gap in patient perceptions of safety in inpatient and outpatient settings is now 2.5x wider than pre-pandemic. While patients in medical practices and ambulatory settings felt substantially safer in 2023 (81.9%) compared to pre-pandemic levels (78.1%), perceptions of safety in hospitals fell 5.1%.  
• Following record lows in 2021, workplace safety culture is increasing. Employee views of safety within their organisation have risen 1.2% over the last two years, but nearly half still report low perceptions of safety culture. 
• Reported assaults against nursing personnel jumped 5% year on year. In 2023, the rate of reported assaults against nurses increased to 2.71 per 100 nursing personnel, from 2.59 the previous year. 
• Safety outcomes show continued momentum. The biggest improvement was seen in catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates, which are now better than pre-pandemic levels. 

1. Identify patients correctly — use at least two ways to identify patients, such as name and date of birth.
2. Improve staff communication — Get the right test results to the right staff member on time.
3. Use medicines safely — Label medicines that are not labelled prior to a procedure, take extra care with patients who take medicines that thin blood, and record and pass along correct information about patient medication.
4. Use alarms safely — Make improvement to alarms on medical equipment so they are heard and responded to on time.
5. Prevent infection — Use the CDC's hand cleaning guidelines and set goals to improve hand cleaning.
6. Identify patient safety risks — Reduce risk of suicide.
7. Improve healthcare equity — Treat improving equity as a quality and patient safety priority.
8. Prevent mistakes in surgery — Ensure the correct surgery is done on the correct patient and in the correct location on the body, and pause before surgery to ensure that no mistake is being made.

 The NPSB is intended to interface with the US Department of Health and Human Services agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and private entities on patient safety issues.[1] Modelled after the National Transportation Safety Board and the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, the NPSB would:

• Identify harm: The NPSB would identify and anticipate major sources of harm and not require additional data submission by healthcare providers.
• Conduct studies: The NPSB would first identify significant widespread harm, and then focus on understanding the pre-cursors and solutions to major harm sources, as opposed to conducting studies of all individual incidents.
• Recommend solutions: The NPSB would create recommendations and autonomous solutions to prevent patient safety events.

 The National Patient Safety Board Act is endorsed by members of the National Patient Safety Board Advocacy Coalition, a group of healthcare organisations, provider associations, businesses, nonprofit organisations and consumer advocacy groups calling for the creation of a NPSB.[2]

Related reading

 You can find out more about the campaign for a National Patient Safety Board in a blog on the hub by Olivia Lounsbury, Committee Lead for the National Patient Safety Oversight committee of Patients for Patient Safety US. In this blog she outlines why the NPSB is needed and demonstrates the importance of engaging patients and families in its design and processes.[3]

More details about the campaign itself, and if relevant how to contact your US House member’s office in regards to this, can be found on the National Patient Safety Board Advocacy Coalition website.

References

1. Nanette Diaz Barragán, Reps. Barragán and Burgess Introduce National Patient Safety Board Act, 8 March 2024.
2. National Patient Safety Board. About. Last accessed 12 March 2024.
3. Olivia Lounsbury. Now is not soon enough: Patients, families and the general public have much to gain from the US National Patient Safety Board Act. Patient Safety Learning, 20 April 2023. 

1. Challenges transitioning newly trained clinicians from education into practice
2. Workarounds with barcode medication administration systems
3. Barriers to access maternal and perinatal care
4. Unintended consequences of technology adoption
5. Decline in physical and emotional wellbeing of healthcare workers
6. Complexity of preventing diagnostic error
7. Providing equitable care for people with physical and intellectual disabilities
8. Delay in care resulting from drug, supply and equipment shortages
9. Misuse of parenteral syringes to administer oral liquid medications
10. Ongoing challenges with preventing patient falls