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Patient Safety Organization (PSO)
Sponsored by the Connecticut Healthcare Research and Education Foundation (CHREF)

The CHREF Patient Safety Organization (PSO) assists hospitals in improving the quality of care and patient safety through collaboration and data sharing.  It is only one of three patient safety organizations designated by the Connecticut Department of Public Health. Membership in the PSO, offered at a fee, is open to all entities that are required by Connecticut law to seek to work with a PSO. Currently, PSO membership includes all 28 CHA member hospitals and two non-acute member hospitals.

The PSO is improving care and creating sustainable learning communities throughout Connecticut hospitals through its clinical collaboratives. The collaborative currently underway is focused on addressing the causes known to increase the risk of a patient fall and evidence-based strategies and interventions that can assist clinicians in preventing patient falls. 

Thanks to generous funding from philanthropists and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, The Johns Hopkins University Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG) is now working with all 50 states to achieve similar improvements in a project titled “STOP BSI”. In Connecticut, the “STOP BSI” project was launched on April 13, 2009 with 13 ICU teams participating in a meeting with Dr. Peter Pronovost and his team from The Johns Hopkins University QSRG. The 14 Connecticut hospitals participating in the project have committed their ICU teams to eliminating CLABSI within two years by implementing safety checklists, standardizing processes, identifying and mitigating defects, doing communication training, and measurably improving the culture of safety in the ICU.

On Friday, February 12, 2010, CHA hosted a collaborative kick-off on Reducing Heart Failure Readmissions, which will be aimed at reducing readmissions through improving and standardizing the processes related to the care of the heart failure patient. Every year, nearly 5 million people in the United States experience heart failure, which can significantly affect a person’s ability to function in daily life, and it is the leading cause of hospitalization, and readmission among older Americans. The collaborative helped participating organizations standardize processes related to: providing evidence-based care to patients with heart failure; enhancing the admission assessment for post-discharge needs; engaging patients and their families as active partners in care; patient and family-centered hand-off communication; medication reconciliation, adherence and safety; and post-acute care follow-up.

For more information, please contact Alison Hong, MD, Interim Vice President, Quality and Patient Safety at (203) 294-7266 or at hong@chime.org.

Click here for the World Health Organization (WHO) Patient Safety website.

Click here for a video from the second learning session of the Patient Safety Organization (PSO) Patient Falls Collaborative that was held on Friday, June 19, 2009 at CHA, where over 70 people from 21 participating collaborative teams focused on addressing the causes known to increase the risk of a patient fall and evidence-based strategies and interventions that can assist clinicians in preventing patient falls.