Links

This page provides links to the web sites of organizations and agencies involved in patient safety activities.

• Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, USA
  Launched in December 1989 as the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR), this was a Public Health Service agency in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Reporting to the HHS Secretary, the Agency was renamed the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality in December 1999. AHRQ's mission is to support research designed to improve the outcomes and quality of health care, reduce its costs, address patient safety and medical errors, and broaden access to effective services. The research sponsored, conducted and disseminated by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides information that helps people make better decisions about health care.
• Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Health Care
  Established in January 2000 by Australian health ministers to lead national efforts to improve the safety and quality of health care, the Council is leading the way in ensuring that systematic improvement occurs within Australia's health care system.
  
  Council members come from a variety of backgrounds and have a wide range of skills and experience. Membership includes an independent consumer voice, as well as expertise in health care safety and quality, education, training and research.
• Clinical Indemnity Scheme
  The Clinical Indemnity Scheme (CIS) was established in 2002, in order to rationalise pre-existing medical indemnity arrangements by transferring to the State, via the Health Service Executive (HSE), hospitals and other health agencies, responsibility for managing clinical negligence claims and associated risks.
• Danish Society for Patient Safety
  The Danish Society for Patient Safety was established in 2001 and is an independent, non-profit organization for improving patient safety. The board members represent a wide range of stakeholders in Danish health care: Health care professionals, patient and research organizations, the Danish Regions, the pharmaceutical and medical industry, the Danish Consumer Council and Local Government Denmark. The Society has published a series of educational material covering a wide range of patient safety issues and in 2006 the Society published 'The Patient Handbook - a patient's guide to a safer hospital stay'.
• Department of Health, United Kingdom
  Sir Liam Donaldson is the UK Government's principal medical advisor and the professional head of all medical staff. He has been an Executive Board member of WHO for the last three years and provides international leadership for WHO on patient safety.
• ECRI
  ECRI (formerly the Emergency Care Research Institute) is an independent, not-for-profit health services research agency. Its mission is to improve the safety, quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. It has been active in the patient safety field for many years.
• Health-EU
  The Public Health Portal of the European Union: Patient safety depends on effective and sustained policies and programmes being in place throughout Europe. These objectives are high on the EU policy agenda. In 2005, the Member States established a mechanism to discuss and take forward patient safety issues as a healthcare priority. A special working group was set up under the High Level Group on Health Services and Medical Care to identify priority areas for action. The EU aims to facilitate and support its Member States in their work and activities. Reports and learning systems in this field would permit information on problems and solutions to be shared throughout Europe.
• The Health Foundation: Safer Patients Initiative
  The Health Foundation is an independent charity that aims to improve health and the quality of healthcare in the UK. It spends around £15 million annually on initiatives to develop leaders in health; promote innovation in the delivery of health services; and disseminate evidence for changing health policy and practice.
  The Health Foundation’s Safer Patients Initiative is a £4 million programme which will explore how to make hospitals safer for patients. We are currently working with four acute hospital trusts across the UK to help them reach their goal of transforming patient safety. The clinical and managerial professionals in these trusts will work with international patient safety experts from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to identify and implement changes to improve safety for patients. The trusts will also be supported to become centres of excellence and will develop methods to spread their learning throughout the health service.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement
  The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is a not-for-profit organization driving the improvement of health by advancing the quality and value of health care.
  
  The activities of IHI have evolved and grown for a decade. This evolution reflects more than just the inevitable changes that every organization undergoes. It reflects the developmental stages that the professional health care community has experienced and must continue to pursue in order to ensure future improvement successes.
• Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations, USA
  The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 16,000 health care organizations and programmes in the United States. An independent, not-for-profit organization, JCAHO is the nation's predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Since 1951, JCAHO has developed state-of-the-art, professionally based standards and evaluated the compliance of health care organizations against these benchmarks. Its mission is to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations.
• National Patient Safety Agency, United Kingdom
  The NPSA is a Special Health Authority created in July 2001 to coordinate the efforts of the entire country to report, and more importantly to learn from, mistakes and problems that affect patient safety.
  
  As well as making sure errors are reported in the first place, the NPSA is trying to promote an open and fair culture in the NHS, encouraging all health care staff to report incidents without undue fear of personal reprimand. It will then collect reports from throughout the country and initiate preventive measures, so that the whole country can learn from each case and patient safety throughout the NHS can be improved.
• National Patient Safety Education Framework (Australia)
• - The Patient Handbook - a patient's guide to a safer hospital stay [pdf 6.32mb]
• Saferhealthcare
  Saferhealthcare is an online patient safety resource and an opportunity for people interested in this area to link up, share ideas and develop communities of interest. The website is a partnership between the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), BMJ Publishing Group, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and those of you who join, and aims to highlight the most important developments in this field.
• Standing Committee of Nurses of the European Union
  The Standing Committee of Nurses of the EU was established in 1971. The Committee represents over a million nurses and is the independent voice of the nursing profession. Membership consists of representatives from the national nurses association in membership with the International Council of Nurses from each EU Member State and countries in membership of the Council of Europe, many of which are applicants for EU membership status.
• Standing Committee of European Doctors
  The Standing Committee of European Doctors(CPME) is composed of 26 members. An organization representing medical doctors may become a member of the Standing Committee with voting rights if it is the most representative non-governmental national medical organization of one of the countries of the European Union or one of the signatory countries of the European Economic Area agreement.
• University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
  The Patient Safety Research Programme (PSRP) was set up in the UK to promote patient safety research in the wake of the publication of the Chief Medical Officer's An Organisation With A Memory, a report on learning from adverse events in the NHS. PSRP is funded by the Policy Research Programme and the Department of Health, and reports directly to Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer.