PSO of Florida Teams with ECRI Institute PSO for Patient Safety Reporting and Analysis

Plymouth Meeting, PA, September 10, 2009 — The Florida Hospital Association (FHA) and the South Florida Hospital & Healthcare Association (SFHHA) today announce an agreement with the ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization (PSO) to support the Patient Safety Organization of Florida (PSOFlorida) with patient safety data collection and analysis. PSOFlorida, a component organization of the FHA and the SFHHA, was established to focus on improving the quality of care that hospitals in Florida provide to the state’s residents and visitors.

?“Hospitals have made improving patient care a priority and the development of PSOFlorida is an essential element in measuring and evaluating that improvement,” said Bruce Rueben, FHA President. “Past legal efforts to impede improvement in patient care will be reduced by PSOFlorida.”

ECRI Institute PSO (www.ecri.org/pso) will support PSOFlorida through a Patient Safety Data Collection and Reporting System and by analyzing adverse events and other information from participating hospitals and providers. The reporting platform is powered by rL Solutions, a leading software company with deep experience in adverse event reporting. The ECRI Institute PSO analytics team has experience handling more than 1 million adverse event reports.

“Improving patient safety and raising levels of quality require hospitals to appropriately identify errors, track their origins, share their results, and implement improvements,” said Linda Quick, SFHHA President. “PSOFlorida provides the means and opportunity for Florida hospitals to do all these things.”

“We look forward to working with PSOFlorida on new initiatives to improve patient safety throughout the state,” says Ronni Solomon, executive vice president and general counsel, ECRI Institute.

ECRI Institute PSO will provide data collection and reporting systems, state aggregation, expert patient safety analysis, culture-of-safety recommendations, and advisories.

For information about PSOFlorida, visit www.PSOFlorida.org, or call (850) 222-9800.

About the PSOFlorida?
PSOFlorida has been formed as a component organization of the Florida Hospital Association (FHA) and the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association (SFHHA) under the authority of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA), which was passed by Congress in 2005. PSOFlorida’s mission is to improve the safety and quality of healthcare delivery through the application of science and implementation of best-practice evidence with the objective of preventing patient injury or death.

About ECRI Institute?
For 40 years, ECRI Institute’s work in patient safety, adverse event reporting and analysis, and development of recommendations has improved patient care at hospitals and other providers around the world. ECRI Institute has a long history of investigating events and publishing authoritative risk reduction strategies. ECRI Institute is designated an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and a Collaborating Center for Patient Safety, Risk Management, and Healthcare Technology by the World Health Organization. ECRI Institute has developed and implements the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System, a mandatory error and near-miss reporting program for Pennsylvania hospitals and other health care facilities, under contract to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, winner of the 2006 John M. Eisenberg Award. ECRI Institute PSO is a component of ECRI Institute. For more information, visit https://www.ecri.org.