April 27, 2001

Thompson Announces Patient Safety Taskforce, Highlights Concepts

At the April 23-24 National Summit on Patient Safety Data Collection and Use, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson announced the creation of a federal patient safety taskforce. The taskforce's goal is to integrate and streamline existing federal patient safety reporting systems. The taskforce consists of representatives from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Health Care Financing Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration.

Representatives from the taskforce discussed potential concepts that could form the foundation of an integrated federal reporting system, including adding value to existing state and local reporting systems, standardizing current methods and definitions, and system integration. Other speakers at the meeting, who represented a variety of public and private stakeholders, discussed issues relating to the creation and implementation of a system. These presentations included, among others, representatives from New York who discussed the New York Patient Occurrence Reporting and Tracking System (NYPORTS) and hospital representatives who addressed experiences with institution level reporting and data burden. Other issues discussed at the summit included confidentiality, using data for quality improvement, and research on reporting systems. The taskforce will incorporate comments from the summit as they further develop their proposal. No future meetings have been scheduled, to date.

Information: Jeff Patyk , AAMC Division of Health Care Affairs, 202-828-0498.