April 20, 2001
Quality Forum's "Never Events" Steering Committee Completes Initial Work
The "Never Events" Steering Committee of the National Forum for Health Care Quality Measurement and Reporting had its last public meeting on April 17. The steering committee is guiding the Forum's work on developing a list of serious, adverse, health care events. The intent of the list is to facilitate standardized data collection and reporting about serious, adverse, health care events. In addition, it will include recommendations on issues such as aggregating and collecting data for processing and reporting. The project originated from a recommendation in the Quality Interagency Task Force (QuIC) February 2000 report to the president on patient safety initiatives in the federal government.
The steering committee's discussion focused on several technical issues relating to list of events and other sections of the document. They agreed that there were several potential issues and research questions worth noting in the document. Some suggestions included barriers to reporting, measuring and coding the events, and pilot testing the applicability of the list. Committee members emphasized the importance of reviewing the document regularly and agreed to develop a process to accomplish this task. The document will be further refined and sent to the Forum's Member Councils and Board of Directors for review. The first opportunity for the Member Councils to comment on the document will be at the Forum's May 30 membership meeting in Dallas.
Although academic institutions are perceived by industry and government as prominent participants in the commercialization of research, workshop participants from academic institutions made clear that patenting and licensing continue to play only partial, and relatively minor roles, in the ongoing mission and activities of these institutions. In surveys of academic institutions presented by a panel moderated by economist Bronwyn Hall of the University of California, Berkeley, patenting of research inventions remains a lesser priority of institutions' research programs. Few university-held patents become commercially successful, and royalty revenues from patent licenses remain a small fraction of university incomes, not even meriting, in the case of at least one leading research university, a separate line in the institution's annual financial report.
Information: Jeff Patyk, AAMC Division of Health Care Affairs, 202-828-0498.
