AHRQ Launches New Web Site Designed To Provide Single National Source for Patient Safety Findings and Resources

Press Release Date: April 12, 2005

A new Web site announced today by HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is a national "one-stop" portal of resources for improving patient safety and preventing medical errors. The site, AHRQ's Patient Safety Network, or PSNet, can be found at http://psnet.ahrq.gov.

PSNet is the first comprehensive effort to help health care providers, administrators, and consumers learn about all aspects of patient safety. The site provides a wide variety of information on patient safety resources, tools, conferences, and more. PSNet users can customize the site around their unique interests and needs by creating a "My PSNet" page. For instance, a pharmacist interested in how bar coding can help prevent medication errors will be able to set up the site to automatically collect the latest articles, news, and conferences on this topic. Similarly, anesthesiologists and other physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and others can customize and search the site to best meet their needs.

In addition, weekly PSNet updates are available to subscribers on patient safety findings, literature, tools, and conferences, as well as a carefully annotated collection of sentinel patient safety journal articles in a "Classics" section. The site was developed by the same team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, that developed AHRQ's popular WebM&M online patient safety journal, which will now be accessible on PSNet.

"AHRQ PSNet provides a one-stop portal for patient safety resources to help health care professionals improve health care for all Americans," says AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D. "Since health care improvement begins at the local and individual level, users can customize their own PSNet page, which will help them make better health care decisions."

Robert Wachter, M.D., Associate Chairman of UCSF's Department of Medicine and Chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center, leads the project team that developed the site. "Until about 5 years ago, there was remarkably little evidence to inform decisions about patient safety, despite the incredibly high stakes. Now, in large part due to AHRQ-supported efforts, the challenge has shifted from making decisions with an insufficient amount of information, to managing a growing but unorganized treasure trove of data and tools. AHRQ PSNet promises to be the leading Web site to help patients, policymakers, and researchers meet this unique need."

PSNet is the latest patient safety improvement endeavor by AHRQ, which leads the federal government's effort to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors. AHRQ's mission is to improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans.

For further information on PSNet, visit the site at http://psnet.ahrq.gov.

For more information, please contact AHRQ Public Affairs: (301) 427-1855 or (301) 427-1865.

Internet Citation:

AHRQ Launches New Web Site Designed To Provide Single National Source for Patient Safety Findings and Resources. Press Release, April 12, 2005. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2005/psnetpr.htm