WALTHAM, Mass.—Fresenius Medical Care announced today that the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality officially recognized the company’s Patient Safety Organization (PSO.) Certification by the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services is first for a dialysis organization, Fresenius reported. The purpose of a PSO is to establish a framework by which doctors and other healthcare providers may voluntarily report information to PSOs, on a privileged and confidential basis, to collect and analyze patient safety events.
Regulations outline how the PSO may utilize data and act as a resource for healthcare providers to understand and minimize the risks and hazards in delivering patient care. A PSO's workforce must have expertise in analyzing patient safety events, such as the identification, analysis, prevention, and reduction or elimination of the risks and hazards associated with the delivery of patient care.
“Each of our more than 1,800 kidney dialysis clinics in the U.S. has a Quality Improvement Committee that investigates the root causes of all patient adverse events, with the objective of continuous improvement in patient safety and quality of care,” said Michael Lazarus, MD, director of Fresenius Medical Care Patient Safety Organization.
“Our companywide Patient Safety Organization performs a more global root cause analysis of aggregate data,” he added. “We do this to maximize safe conditions in our facilities and to provide the safest dialysis treatments possible. When we find unsafe situations or processes that lead to errors, it is important to change our approach and to educate the staff as well as the patients about any unsafe conditions so that together we can eliminate them.”
Source: Fresenius Medical Care
