Patient safety events among children receiving home health care (4 May 2026)

Summary

This study, published in JAMA Network Open, considered how often and what types of patient safety events are reported by paediatric home health care staff. Researchers undertook a multistate cohort study of paediatric home health care data of 2,901 children, more than 1 in 10 children had an incident reported by agency staff.

In this cohort it found that more than 1 in 10 had a reported incident, of which approximately half were patient safety related. This work provides new data about paediatric home health safety, with the authors suggesting that further work should explore factors contributing to and preventing health care related harms to children at home and include parent perspectives.