U.S. representatives have reintroduced bipartisan legislation to establish a National Patient Safety Board, a team that would be housed within HHS and dedicated to preventing medical errors.
Reps. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif., and Michael Burgess, R-Texas, reintroduced the National Patient Safety Board Act March 11, the start of Patient Safety Awareness Week. The legislation is loosely modeled off of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has been credited for driving significant increases in safety within the aviation industry. The bill proposes the creation of an independent team that would be part of HHS to advance safety in healthcare by using data to learn from harms and develop solutions to prevent medical errors.
The bill's sponsors say the National Patient Safety Board would be "data-driven" and "nonpunitive," and that the team is meant to collaborate with existing federal agencies and patient safety organizations to understand root causes of harm and establish consensus around solutions to issues such as medication errors, wrong-site surgeries and hospital-acquired infections.
A growing coalition of health systems, patient advocacy groups and other stakeholders have expressed support for the establishment of a national board dedicated to patient safety.
"We have seen many valiant efforts to reduce the problem of preventable medical error, but most of these have relied on the frontline workforce to do the work or take extraordinary precautions," Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative and spokesperson for the National Patient Safety Board Advocacy Coalition, said in a news release. "New attention is being paid to longstanding patient safety challenges, but substantial progress requires the creation of a national home for patient safety to promote substantive solutions, including those that deploy modern technologies to make safety as autonomous as possible."
After lawmakers first proposed a version of the patient safety board act in December 2022, reactions were mixed among healthcare experts. Some said they do not believe the measure, which would not require providers to be named in reports, would create enough accountability to drive significant improvements in safety. Others contend protecting the identity of healthcare organizations and details of safety events could boost voluntary reporting.