Midwest Alliance for Patient Safety Teams Up with ECRI Institute

The Midwest Alliance for Patient Safety (MAPS) and ECRI Institute, two patient safety organization (PSO) leaders, are combining their synergies to help guide the transformation of patient care in Illinois and beyond.

As part of its expanding PSO program, MAPS has teamed up with ECRI Institute to deliver PSO adverse event data collection solutions, robust educational opportunities and privilege protections provided by law. In addition, the enhanced program delivers nationally recognized PSO training, in-depth data analysis, and extensive educational tools for improving the quality of patient care.

“Our collective resources will support patient safety initiatives while providing all the benefits and protections of belonging to a PSO,” said Maryjane Wurth, CEO, MAPS. “By collaborating with ECRI Institute, MAPS is one step closer to our goal of providing the most comprehensive and dynamic PSO program in the Midwest.”

PSOs are designed to help clinicians, hospitals, and healthcare organizations improve patient care delivery by encouraging them to conduct quality and safety analyses. PSOs utilize aggregate data sharing across multiple healthcare provider groups to identify issues quickly and allow improved early warning and communication about ways of reducing risk and improving quality.

Key benefits of this relationship include:
Analytic support and access to robust quality improvement tools
Peer and professional insight into patient safety events and prevention
Quarterly patient safety newsletters, webinars, and social media engagement
Conference calls to share lessons learned and best practices

“MAPS and ECRI Institute share similar values focused on supporting our members’ quality, safety, and performance improvement needs,” says Ronni Solomon, JD, general counsel and executive vice president, ECRI Institute. “Our collective programs will offer a wealth of research and educational opportunities for the MAPS PSO membership. We’re looking forward to a long and successful relationship.”

PSO membership allows hospitals to meet the 2017 Accountable Care Act requirement that Qualified Health Plans participating with health insurance exchanges contract with hospitals of more than 50 beds only if those hospitals have a patient safety evaluation system as defined by the PSO regulations.

ECRI Institute PSO services are based on applied research, interactive tools, a learning network, and a reporting platform. To enable healthcare providers to learn from near misses and adverse events, and to improve patient care, the PSO provides incident report collection and analysis. The reporting platform provides a secure way for ECRI Institute PSO to accept data from providers using any electronic system, as well as to provide a Web-based, intuitive interface for data entry.

Source: ECRI Institute