Vascular Study Group Patient Safety Organization
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Legal Establishment of a Patient Safety Organization
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In response to rising healthcare costs and increasing concerns about the quality of healthcare delivery in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services instituted the Patient Safety and Quality Act of 2005 to encourage healthcare providers to share outcome and patient safety data without fear of legal discovery. The Final Rule of this Act, which went into effect in November 2008, established an implementation mechanism known as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO), through which the objectives of the Patient Safety Act could be achieved. The Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) was appointed to administer the provisions of the Patient Safety Act and oversee the approval and operations of PSOs.
The importance of the Patient Safety Act for providers and hospitals is that it will protect all quality work products generated from data entered into a PSO from legal discovery in state and federal court. Quality work products include outcome analyses, benchmarked reports, and other aggregated information intended for quality improvement purposes. The identity of hospitals and providers that are compared in benchmarking and other quality analyses generated through a PSO cannot be disclosed or discovered. Another advantage of a PSO for providers and hospitals is that it permits the collection of patient-identified data for quality improvement purposes without requiring consent from individual patients or prior approval from an Institutional Review Board.
The VSG PSO
The Vascular Study Group Patient Safety Organization, LLC (VSG PSO), was established to oversee the data sharing partnerships and patient safety initiatives of customers utilizing M2S' Clinical Data Pathways platform. Composed of MDs, analysts, and administrative personnel, the VSG PSO staff provides medical expertise, analyses, and oversight of quality improvement activities conducted through the PSO. The mission of the VSG PSO is to improve patient safety and the quality of health care delivery by providing web-based collection, aggregation, and analysis of clinical data submitted in registry format for all patients undergoing specific treatments through the use of M2S' Clinical Data Pathways product.
For general information about PSOs, you can go to the AHRQ website at: www.pso.ahrq.gov
Additional Resources
