California Hospital Patient Safety Organization (CHPSO)

Latest News

CHPSO is calling for submission of best practices for implementing the Joint Commission Universal Protocol and the World Health Organization Surgical Checklist.

The fifth monthly edition of CHPSO Patient Safety News has been released.

The extensive hand hygiene action tools from the World Health Organization (WHO) are now listed and categorized on this site for easy retrieval.

The Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) developed a template Universal Protocol policy.

CHPSO and the California Hospital Association have been selected to participate in a 10-state project to study methods to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections in hospital ICUs.

CHPSO and the California Hospital Association endorse the WHO surgical checklist.

What is CHPSO?

The California Hospital Patient Safety Organization (CHPSO), created by the California Hospital Association after approval from the Board of Trustees, has received approval by HHS and is now listed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO). CHPSO is the second organization in the nation to receive this designation. The list of approved PSOs is located at http://www.pso.ahrq.gov/listing/psolist.htm.

Until passage of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA), we did not have the appropriate tools to address systems issues and disseminate information learned from safety events. Quality improvement activities tended to be regulated by state laws, which generally addressed peer review of the qualifications and skills of individual practitioners. Systems review, and the types of activities that benefit systems learning, were not protected by the state laws. The lack of protection inhibited reporting and learning from these failures.

Systems failures, unlike individual failures, are often best addressed by sharing the experience with others (e.g., other hospitals). The PSQIA recognizes this, and created PSOs as a method of sharing and analyzing information within a sphere of confidentiality for both patient and provider, and privilege from discovery.

CHPSO’s distinct advantage over other PSOs will be its focus on the laws, regulations and patient safety initiatives specific to California. Additionally, CHPSO will coordinate its efforts with the Regional Hospital Associations and existing patient safety collaboratives across the state. Hospitals sharing a common market area will be able to work together and focus their patient safety and quality improvement efforts on issues relevant to their community.