ECRI Institute PSO Announces Release of Updated Patient Safety Event Collection and Reporting System

ECRI Institute's Patient Safety Organization (PSO) has released a new version of its adverse event collection and reporting system. This release is fully compliant with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Common Formats Version 1.1 and includes the latest formats for health information technology (HIT) reporting.

ECRI Institute has continued to update and improve its web-based patient safety reporting system since first operating as an AHRQ-certified PSO. ECRI Institute PSOs reporting system, designed to capture both near misses and serious adverse events, currently has more than 100,000 events in its database.

We are pleased to be able to provide this update to our members so quickly. This revision, which includes AHRQs HIT enhancement, reflects a growing area of importance in patient safety, says Karen Zimmer, MD, MPH, medical director for the ECRI Institute PSO. Analysis of the events received through our event collection and reporting system helps ECRI Institute PSO share the most important patient safety lessons with our members and the public.

This update also incorporates enhancements to the device-related forms based on ECRI Institutes expertise in this key area. The ECRI Institute PSO collects, analyzes and addresses all types of events from a range of clinical specialties and healthcare settings across the country.

ECRI Institute PSO encourages IT vendors to map to the Common Formats to accelerate sharing, aggregation and learning, says Barbara G. Rebold, RN, MS, CPHQ, director of operations for the ECRI Institute PSO. This allows PSOs and AHRQ to analyze and report information for improvement nationally.

ECRI Institute PSO member organizations can report manually or, like many others, import data from their existing adverse event reporting systems to the ECRI Institute PSO system. Members receive Guidance for Patient Safety toolkits, newsletters and user group meetings, INsight Assessment surveys, and much more. ECRI Institute PSO also shares these learnings publicly through free resources, such as PSO Monthly Briefs.