Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare | December 2013
By Teri Yates, CHC
Early this year Strategic Radiology Patient Safety Organization LLC was announced as a component entity of Strategic Radiology LLC, an affiliation of 16 group practices representing more than 1,200 radiologists. The new patient safety organization (PSO) was listed by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on June 19, 2013, signifying that its certifications have been accepted by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) and making it the first radiology-specific PSO in the country.
PSOs improve healthcare quality by aggregating and analyzing data about adverse events; the PSO then helps its client healthcare organizations develop systems to identify risks and prevent patient harm based on what it learns from those analyses. To encourage participation, the adverse event data and analyses reported to or conducted by a listed PSO (called patient safety work product) are deemed privileged and confidential. Creation of a safe environment for transparent sharing and learning is one of the key reasons that Strategic Radiology (SR) formed its PSO. Randal Roat, chief operating officer for SR, explains: