The Adverse Health Events Reporting Law, passed during the 2003 legislative session and modified again in 2004, provides health care consumers with information on how well hospitals, community behavioral health hospitals, and outpatient surgical centers are doing at preventing adverse events. The law requires that these facilities disclose when any of 28 serious reportable events occur and requires MDH to publish annual reports of the events by facility, along with an analysis of the events, the corrections implemented by facilities and any recommendations for improvement.
Since our beginning in 1979 as a Medicare peer review organization mandated by federal law and acting in only a portion of Arizona, we have burgeoned to our present status and now serve over 20 percent of the Medicare population nationwide as a quality improvement organization (QIO). HSAG has also become involved with Medicaid programs in more than a dozen states where we work to assure the quality, access, timeliness, and appropriateness of care for approximately 45 percent of the nation’s Medicaid recipients.
The Authority is charged with taking steps to reduce and eliminate medical errors by identifying problems and recommending solutions that promote patient safety in hospitals, ambulatory surgical facilities, birthing centers and certain abortion facilities. The Authority analyzes and evaluates all reports and makes recommendations for changes in health care practices and procedures which may be instituted to reduce the number and severity of Serious Events and Incidents in Pennsylvania’s healthcare institutions. The Authority’s role is non-regulatory and non-punitive and is distinguished from the role of other state agencies involved in regulating and/or licensing health care facilities or individual providers.
