Hospital report cards should give hospitals credit for conducting internal surveys on safety culture, according to an opinion piece on U.S. News & World Report HEALTH.
According to the article's author, more hospitals than ever before are conducting the surveys to take inventory of which behaviors and procedures occurring on their wards are beneficial to patient safety and which need work. Examples of safety culture surveys include Durham, N.C.-based Duke University Health System's Safety Attitudes Questionnaire, developed directly from the Flight Management Attitudes Questionnaire, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's free Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.
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According to the article, safety culture surveying should be included in hospital report cards because it shows hospitals are making a good-faith effort to address caregiver perception of safety considering frequency of adverse events, transition quality, error forgiveness and teamwork within their organizations.
A potential problem: Few hospitals display public results for their safety culture survey. In the absence of hospital-specific data, it may be difficult for ranking bodies, such as U.S. News & World Report to incorporate the information into ranking algorithms. However, the article suggests developing a proxy for the safety culture survey may be a feasible workaround.
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