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Ohio KēPRO - Your Medicare Quality Improvment Organization
About Ohio KēPRO

Patient Safety

Since the release of the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err is Human in 1999, the issue of patient safety has come into the spotlight as a pressing national health challenge. The report estimated that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 patients die each year due to lapses in patient safety.


The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is not the only national organization that has developed initiatives to improve patient safety. The Department of Defense (DoD), the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Joint Commission, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) also support initiatives to make improvements in this area.


The requirements of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Patient Safety Initiative (NPSI) address ways to improve safety by making evidence-based changes to healthcare processes and systems. The initiative provides continuity from previous QIO projects (i.e., drug safety; surgical care and heart care in hospitals; and pressure ulcer prevention and physical restraint reduction in nursing homes), allowing the provider community and the QIO community to build on the progress they have made over the last three years.


In addition, the new three-year NPSI introduces relevant topics such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and pressure ulcer prevention in hospitals and QIO technical assistance for nursing homes in need, giving providers and QIOs the opportunity to broaden the scope of their patient safety-related improvement activities. Read the Patient Safety Theme national program executive summary.


QIO activities under the Patient Safety Theme will focus on six primary topics:

  1. Reducing rates of healthcare-associated MRSA infections
  2. Reducing rates of pressure ulcers in nursing homes and hospitals
  3. Reducing rates of use of physical restraints in nursing homes
  4. Improving inpatient surgical safety and heart failure treatment in hospitals
  5. Improving drug safety
  6. Providing quality improvement technical assistance to nursing homes in need


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