Making the Patient Safety Act work

The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act, signed into law by President Bush this year, could revolutionize the American healthcare industry by creating an anonymous nationwide database of medical errors to help healthcare workers provide better patient care by sharing information about errors.

The act comes with a protection privilege that shields organizations from liability when they report errors. When a facility files a report with a patient safety organization (PSO), it can’t be used against the organization by a plaintiff or accrediting body, so it is safe from liability.

“When physicians can report errors in a voluntary and confidential manner, everyone benefits,” one expert said.

The next major step is regulating the creation of the PSOs, which will analyze the error information and provide it to healthcare organizations. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality will establish the PSO regulations later this year.

TB screening prevents workplace infection

Employers with workers from countries with high tuberculosis prevalence should utilize pre-hire TB screening, according to a recently published report.

A study by the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine concluded that TB transmission largely occurs among workers from countries with high TB prevalence and close proximity with those workers can result in transmission to workers from countries with low prevalence.

“The growing proportion of immigrant workers in the American workforce may be creating new situations for the emergence of TB in the workplace,” the study said. Language barriers, lack of health care access and inadequate understanding of the importance of treatment exacerbate the problem.

The report urged employers to consider pre-employment screening for immigrant workers from high TB prevalence countries in Central and South America.