July 20, 2001

Quality Forum's Safe Practices Steering Committee Meets and Evaluates Research

The Safe Practices Steering Committee of the National Forum for Health Care Quality Measurement and Reporting met on July 18 to guide the Forum's work on developing a compendium of evidence-based safe practices for all health care settings. The Forum's goal is to have this compendium serve as a guide for all health care stakeholders to recognize, implement, and support practices which improve the quality of care. The project stems from the Quality Interagency Task Force's (QuIC) February 2000 report to the President on patient safety initiatives in the federal government.

The steering committee examined a recent report released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) [see related story] which reviewed evidence on patient safety practices. The steering committee will use this report to help structure the safe practices compendium. The researchers who compiled the report explained the process and structure they used in its development. They noted that many of the practices focus on hospitals because the majority of research occurs in that setting. In addition, they provided a broad overview of the report and clarified several details for the steering committee. After some discussion by the steering committee on aspects of the compendium they reviewed and commented on each chapter. They also addressed the usefulness of the AHRQ report. It was noted that the compendium should address multiple audiences and not focus on hospitals. The steering committee agreed to expand the compendium beyond the issues covered in the AHRQ report. The five areas to be included are:

• Obviously beneficial practices (e.g., removing potassium chloride from general patient care areas);
• Generally beneficial practices (e.g., incident reporting, root cause analysis);
• Practices for which evidence exists outside of health care literature (e.g., promoting a culture of safety, napping strategies);
• Practices salient to consumers (e.g., failure to honor patient preferences for end of life care); and
• Practices applicable to single care settings or conditions.

The Forum plans to have this project finished by next April. The steering committee has tentatively scheduled another public meeting on Oct. 29.

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