Patient Safety Organizations: Hospital Participation, Value, and Challenges

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 AHRQ's voluntary Patient Safety Organization (PSO) program. Hospitals' descriptions of their experiences with the program provide insight into the program's progress toward facilitating national learning from patient safety events. This review is the first to explore the extent to which hospitals participate in the PSO program and their perspectives on its value and challenges.