Making Healthcare Safer IV: Programs for responding to harms experienced by patients during clinical care (2 April 2025)

Summary

The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released this rapid review examining the current literature on the effectiveness of programmes used by healthcare organisations to respond after patients experience harm during their care. The review focused on communication and resolution programs (CRPs) that included communication with the patient and family, event review, quality improvement, and in a qualifying subset of events, an apology for causing harm and an offer of compensation.

The review found that while studies of CRPs’ effects have focused on organisational liability and cost outcomes rather than patient-oriented outcomes they did find ‘CRPs appear to have positive or neutral effects on the measured outcomes, with no significant negative effects.

The findings support the implementation of CRPs while highlighting the need for more research about patient, family, and clinician-oriented outcomes.