ACP, New York chapter to collaborate to improve patient safety

ACP announced collaboration this month with the New York ACP chapter to extend New York's medical Near Miss Registry into a national patient safety reporting and professional educational program. The announcement was made possible with ACP's Center for Quality's listing as an official Patient Safety Organization by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Near misses” are close calls or errors that are detected and corrected before resulting in patient harm. Over the last five years, New York's ACP chapter, under the leadership of Ethan Fried, MD, MACP, of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, and a statewide advisory committee with the support of the New York State Department of Health's Patient Safety Center, pioneered the first statewide near-miss registry. In the initial phase, the near-miss investigators trained more than 3,000 internal medicine residents throughout the state.

In later phases of the registry and education program, it was extended to all physicians and allied health professionals. An educational program for health care professionals outlining patient safety, system barriers and steps to identify near-miss events was presented at more than 50 hospitals and professional societies across New York State.

“Our goal is to change the culture of health care into one that learns from mistakes and shares best practices in patient safety,” Dr. Fried said.

Building on this effort, ACP has joined forces with New York chapter to expand the Near Miss Registry nationwide, including to outpatient health care practices. It will link registry reports of near misses to educational resources that will help clinical teams strengthen patient safety through data-driven system improvements shown to be effective.

Read more about the origins of the New York program online.