As part of its goal to support a culture of patient safety and quality improvement in the nation’s health care system, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sponsored the development of three specific patient safety culture assessment tools for hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory outpatient medical offices. In the fall of 2009, twenty-two GRIN affiliated Michigan primary care practices participated in a nation-wide Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture for outpatient settings. The project surveyed 292 medical offices including 6,463 staff across 17 States and was part of a “benchmarking” process to create a useful tool and database available to all primary care clinics interested in their own office safety culture and how it compares to other offices.
The survey asks specific groups of questions designed to measures office attitudes in the following areas as they relate to safety; teamwork, organizational learning and training, communication, patient care tracking and follow-up, office process and procedure standardization, perceived owner/leadership support for safety, work pressure and pace and overall perceptions of patient safety and quality.
Primary care offices can use this assessment tool to:
- Raise staff awareness about patient safety.
- Diagnose and assess the current status of patient safety culture.
- Identify strengths and areas for patient safety culture improvement.
- Examine trends in patient safety culture change over time.
- Evaluate the cultural impact of patient safety initiatives and interventions.
- Conduct internal and external comparisons.
Results for Michigan Practices are generally very close to national averages and are shown in the following table. Percentages indicate the average number of positive responses to the battery of questions associated with each topic.
| Michigan GRIN Practice Averages | National Practice Averages | |
|---|---|---|
| Teamwork | 81% | 82% |
| Patient care tracking and follow-up | 75% | 76% |
| Organizational Learning | 70% | 74% |
| Overall perceptions of patient safety and quality | 72% | 74% |
| Overall perceptions of patient safety and quality | 71% | 72% |
| Owner/Partner/Leadership support for patient safety | 65% | 66% |
| Communication about error | 66% | 66% |
| Communication openness | 61% | 65% |
| Patient safety and quality issues | 56% | 59% |
| Office processes and standardization | 54% | 58% |
| Information exchange with other settings | 49% | 51% |
| Work pressure and pace | 47% | 44% |
For more information about the survey, results and to take the survey and get results for your office go to the AHRQ website at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/patientsafetyculture/mosurvindex.htm.
Author: Great Lakes Research Into Practice Network
