Sign Up To Participate

Hospitals desiring to participate with CHPSO need to sign the CHPSO—Participating Hospital Agreement. An information packet describes the contract and the confidentiality and privacy rules that apply when working with a PSO.

Open discussion and information sharing, critical for learning from systems issues, are not protected by peer review or attorney-client privilege. Recognizing this, Congress passed legislation that provides strong Federal confidentiality and privilege protections for discussions, reports and analyses regarding quality and safety, if the provider sends a report to a PSO. CHPSO:

• Provides a voluntary confidential and privileged incident and near-miss reporting system.
• Works with hospitals to identify, analyze and reduce the risks and hazards associated with patient care.
• Aggregates event reports in a protected legal environment, accelerating the identification of patient safety improvements.
• Focuses on the laws, regulations and patient safety initiatives specific to California and coordinates its efforts with the Regional Hospital Associations and existing patient safety collaboratives across the state.

Participation benefits:

• Improved communications. All deliberations and communications about incidents can be privileged, regardless of committee structure or breadth of communication. And hospitals can share experiences to learn from each other.
• Proactive response to Immediate Jeopardy fines and adverse publicity. CHPSO participants will be able to share information about significant risks to identify solutions before an adverse event occurs.
• Pooled expertise. Working together, California hospitals possess an unprecedented depth of knowledge and expertise. Collaboration on patient safety events can freely occur in a privileged confidential environment. This leverages each hospital’s investment in expertise.
• Publicity for our achievements. California’s hospitals and the Regional Hospital Associations devote significant resources to improving patient safety. CHPSO broadly disseminate lessons learned and publicize their work.

To join, hospitals sign a contract that includes a business associate agreement and the privacy and privilege protections. The contract enables participation, but hospitals retain the flexibility to participate or not in each of CHPSO’s program offerings.