We’re often asked what is a patient safety organization (PSO)? How is participation of value to my practice or health system? Why does Ferrum Health have a PSO? To help answer these questions, this week’s Domain Knowledge shares PSO resources for the healthcare professional. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality does a wonderful job covering all things PSO. Here you’ll find everything from what is a PSO to a list of PSO organizations as well as information on the value of working with a PSO. They also have a very in-depth FAQ section. The Center for Patient Safety is another excellent resource that provides information across many aspects of the PSO. The section on reasons to participate in a PSO highlights how many of the long-recognized barriers to successful improvement projects are removed when you are part of a PSO. A report completed by the US Department of Health and Human Services offers a comprehensive overview of the PSO process. The report, Patient Safety Organizations: Hospital Participation, Value and Challenges, is free to download. A couple of highlights from the report:

• Researchers have estimated that over 200,000 people die each year because of medical errors in hospitals. Learning from those and other, nonfatal events to improve patient safety is the goal of the PSO program.
• Among hospitals that work with PSOs, 80 percent find that feedback and analysis on patient safety events have helped prevent future events, and 72 percent find that such feedback has helped them understand the causes of events.

The American Medical Association offers the Physician’s Guide to Patient Safety Organizations. This resource is also free to download and walks through why participate in a PSO, the role of the physician in patient safety, provides a PSO reporting checklist and highlights peer review protections and peer review activities. That’s a wrap for this week’s review of news and happenings in the healthcare AI space. In closing, I’ll leave you with an invitation to learn more about the benefits of using an end-to-end AI platform to manage multiple applications across your clinical needs and offer you a personal demo of Ferrum’s platform and growing AI catalog. Interested in learning more about the Ferrum Health PSO, how it can help your organization and its role in quality improvement and peer learning? Drop us a note and let’s connect.