The effect of an organizational network for patient safety on safety event reporting

Health care organizations continue to implement organization-wide educational approaches to enhance patient safety with less attention on evaluating the impact of these approaches. In this context, a study was conducted to measure the impact of an organization-wide patient safety network approach on patient safety event reporting. A time-series analysis with reported rates of adverse events (major and moderate), near misses, sentinel events, and incidents from 2 years prior through 13 months following implementation was conducted. Study findings include a significant increase in reporting of patient safety events (an approximately 50% increase in overall reporting of safety events was observed; p < .001), especially near misses (an approximately 100% increase following implementation; p = .002). Study findings suggest that a multifaceted networked approach does contribute to improving patient safety event reporting.