The National Quality Strategy Releases New Priorities in Focus Series with Brief on Patient Safety

The National Quality Strategy Releases New Priorities in Focus Series with Brief on Patient Safety

The National Quality Strategy (NQS) Priorities in Focus series brief on Patient Safety is now available. The Priorities in Focus series spotlights current issues, recent Federal initiatives to improve care quality, and recent data demonstrating relevant improvement in each of the six NQS priority areas. This brief is released in concert with the new Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (QDR)Chartbook on Patient Safety, which highlights nationally representative data on individual patient safety-related measures from the 2015 QDR.

The Priorities in Focus brief on Patient Safety features new QDR data that show an overall trend of national improvement in patient safety measures linked to Partnership for Patients efforts, including a 17 percent decline observed in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2014. This resulted in about 2 million harmful events being avoided from 2010 to 2014, saving an estimated 87,000 lives and $20 billion in health care costs. To read the brief, visithttp://www.ahrq.gov/workingforquality/reports/nqs-priority-focus-patient-safety.pdf.

In addition to the Priority in Focus series, the National Quality Strategy has developed a special toolkit in recognition of its 5-year anniversary for organizations to showcase their alignment to and support of the National Quality Strategy. To download an anniversary toolkit, visit http://www.ahrq.gov/workingforquality/toolkit.htm.