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The Maryland Patient Safety Center
The Maryland Patient Safety Center brings together health care providers to study the causes of unsafe practices and put practical improvements in place to prevent errors. Designated in 2004 by the Maryland Healthcare Commission, the Center’s vision is to make Maryland hospitals and nursing homes the safest in the nation.

A Voluntary, Statewide Approach
The Maryland Patient Safety Center is part of a unique approach to patient safety developed by the Maryland Health Care Commission (MHCC) in response to legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2001. The approach combines limited mandatory reporting of serious adverse events to the state health department with voluntary systems improvement activities coordinated by a statewide patient safety center. To carry out its charge to improve safety in Maryland, the Center focuses on the following activities:

Collaboration and Education
The Center facilitates collaboration across providers so they can learn from each other and prevent errors before they are made. The Center sponsors educational conferences and seminars that provide training in processes such as Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) as well as share best practices from Maryland, providers across the nation and worldwide. The Center’s culture collaborative workshops [link] bring together Maryland providers and national experts to focus on safety culture and specific process improvements, with the goal of implementing measurable and sustained improvement.

Voluntary Confidential Reporting Update
As of October 2006, there are three Maryland Hospitals committed to using the Maryland Patient Safety Center’s online event reporting tool that was designed and developed to allow facilities to electronically report their adverse events and near misses in real time and at the patient care level. Three more hospitals are committed to the tool’s implementation by January 2007. The other 26 hospitals agreeing to participate in the event reporting data collection pilot are using alternative reporting systems, but have agreed to send data for inclusion in the preliminary analysis to be completed by late-January to mid-February 2007. In addition to the findings being incorporated into future educational offerings, the Center will also provide feedback to individual reporting hospitals, and it is anticipated that the findings will be used to potentially identify trends and patterns across all participants, including best practices.

Research
The Center will lead applied research to find and implement safer processes and practices. Research findings will be disseminated through educational sessions and other forms of communication.