Prioritizing Patient Safety Efforts in Office Practice Settings

Outpatient care settings face unique risks of adverse events and medico-legal liability, often worsened by inconsistent processes and fragmented care. Health systems are increasingly providing integrated care that includes outpatient care, but models of how to systematically target medico-legal risk in office practices are largely absent. Innovative and scalable efforts are needed to guide large health systems in their approach to outpatient safety.

A malpractice consortium consisting of five large health care delivery systems identified that its ambulatory care cases (including office practices, outpatient hospital settings, and emergency departments) account for 30% to 35% of annual medical malpractice costs, and missed or delayed diagnoses account for approximately 50% of office practice liability risk. To further understand risks and opportunities in office-based practices, a team of patient safety and loss prevention professionals conducted site visits to seven outpatient-affiliated sites of the five health systems from January to March 2016 and interviewed several key informant members of physician, nursing, and administrative leadership.

We identified eight common patient safety risk domains based on analysis of eight sets of group interviews. Risk domains were then prioritized by members of the consortium leadership using scoring criteria that we developed based on existing risk assessment and prioritization approaches. The method helped identify communication and follow-up of diagnostic test results in the outpatient setting as the single most important risk area to target improvement efforts.

A targeted approach to identify a single high-risk area led to development of dedicated teams to conduct local patient safety improvement projects at the affiliated health systems and for sharing lessons learned. Similar efforts elsewhere could lead to safety improvements in office practices at other large health systems.