Sources of unsafe primary care for older adults: a mixed-methods analysis of patient safety incident reports

older adults are frequent users of primary healthcare services, but are at increased risk of healthcare-related harm in this setting.

to describe the factors associated with actual or potential harm to patients aged 65 years and older, treated in primary care, to identify action to produce safer care.

a cross-sectional mixed-methods analysis of a national (England and Wales) database of patient safety incident reports from 2005 to 2013.

1,591 primary care patient safety incident reports regarding patients aged 65 years and older.

we developed a classification system for the analysis of patient safety incident reports to describe: the incident and preceding chain of incidents; other contributory factors; and patient harm outcome. We combined findings from exploratory descriptive and thematic analyses to identify key sources of unsafe care.

the main sources of unsafe care in our weighted sample were due to: medication-related incidents e.g. prescribing, dispensing and administering (n = 486, 31%; 15% serious patient harm); communication-related incidents e.g. incomplete or non-transfer of information across care boundaries (n = 390, 25%; 12% serious patient harm); and clinical decision-making incidents which led to the most serious patient harm outcomes (n = 203, 13%; 41% serious patient harm).

priority areas for further research to determine the burden and preventability of unsafe primary care for older adults, include: the timely electronic tools for prescribing, dispensing and administering medication in the community; electronic transfer of information between healthcare settings; and, better clinical decision-making support and guidance.