Patient Safety Work Product and Its Limitations: A Discussion of Two Recent Cases

Through the PSQIA, the mechanism for the receipt of this information was the formation of patient safety organizations and a national patient safety database. Patient safety organizations (PSOs) are defined as private organizations, or a component thereof, that are certified through a process developed through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under the Act, PSOs perform the activities of conducting and organizing, as their primary activity, efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of health care delivery, collecting and analyzing patient safety work product that is submitted by their providers, and other activities. The goal of a PSO is to improve patient safety by utilizing patient safety work product to carry out its activities and to minimize patient risk of health care errors.