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PSOs and EMS
Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) help enhance safety and quality within the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) sector.
What is a PSO?
Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) are federally recognized entities that work with healthcare providers, including Emergency Medical Services (EMS) agencies, to improve patient safety. They provide a secure environment for collecting, analyzing, and learning from patient safety events to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
- PSOs provide a secure, collaborative space for EMS agencies to improve patient safety.
- PSOs provide legal protections under PSQIA to encourage transparent reporting and learning.
- Data-driven insights lead to actionable recommendations and improved care.
- Partnering with a PSO strengthens the safety culture within EMS organizations.
PSO Certified
When searching for a PSO, make sure they are a Listed PSO. The Center for Patient Safety has been a Listed PSO since 2008.
Benefits of Participating with a PSO
- Legal Protections for Your Agency: participating with a federally designated PSO, like CPS, ensures you can gain federal protection for safety data and safety work, encouraging open reporting.
- Data-Driven Improvements You Can Use: Insights from the CPS PSO help EMS agencies address safety concerns effectively at the local-level and industry-wide.
- Foster a Safety Culture in Your Agency: Participation promotes non-punitive reporting and continuous learning.
- Learn and Apply EMS-specific Solutions: The CPS PSO creates and provides recommendations that are tailored to EMS-specific challenges.
Are you based out of an organization located in Missouri?
Check out PSO participation options available to you!
What Does a Patient Safety Organization Do?
CONFIDENTIAL DATA COLLECTION
PSOs receive reports on adverse events, near misses, and unsafe conditions from EMS agencies, ensuring confidentiality and protection under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA)
DATA ANALYSIS
PSOs use aggregated data to identify trends, root causes, and systemic safety issues, highlight high-risk areas and provide actionable insights while delivering tailored safety solutions and best practices
FACILITATE COLLABORATION
PSOs encourage information sharing among member organizations to promote collective learning while sharing strategies for mitigating risks and improving outcomes
EDUCATION AND TRAINING
PSOs offer resources and programs to educate EMS providers on safety practices, offering insight to develop training based on real-world data and identified needs.
Who Can Participate with a PSO
Any licensed provider can participate with a PSO and receive the protections, including but not limited to, emergency medical services (EMS), nursing homes, home health and hospice, pharmacies, hospitals, telehealth, health systems, medical offices, dental offices, and ambulatory surgery centers (ASC).
CPS works with providers across the care continuum, however, has an enhanced focus on Emergency Medical Services, both air and ground. CPS works with independent EMS and fire departments as well as regional, state-based, and national groups.
Why Choose the Center for Patient Safety?
- CPS is the only PSO in the nation focused on working with EMS agencies
- CPS has dedicated EMS staff with knowledge about out-of-hospital practice. Our staff will partner directly with your team to ensure success.
- CPS is building national EMS Patient Safety work groups to enhance knowledge sharing among our PSO members.
What Can You Expect with Your Participation in the CPS EMS PSO?
By participating with the CPS EMS PSO, you can expect to:
- gain access to an optional web-based portal for reporting and tracking events
- get legal protections for some of your most sensitive quality and safety work
- learn from aggregate industry data on clinical errors and causal factors
- receive professional feedback and analysis on quality and safety processes
- discuss real-time safety events with EMS patient safety experts
- gain an understanding of industry safety trends with aggregate data reported by thousands of EMS services nationally
- reduce preventable harm
- protect conversations and safety/quality work sessions with your peers and other community providers such as hospitals and nursing homes
- access education and training on patient safety, leadership, and culture change from leading industry experts
Steps to Join the CPS EMS PSO
Contact us to learn more about PSO Participation.
We can help you decide if joining a PSO is right for you. If you decide to move forward, we'll discuss pricing (we make every effort to provide affordable, high quality services) and start a contract. Once a contract is in place, you'll have a few key objectives to get started, but we'll support you every step of the way.
- Develop a System: Create a Patient Safety Evaluation System (PSES) with the help of your CPS PSO Onboarding Team.
- Submit Data: Regularly report incidents and near misses to the PSO.
- Implement Feedback: Use PSO and information from your PSES to update practices and protocols.
- Monitor Results: Assess the impact of changes and refine processes as needed.
Contact Us
CPS EMS PSO At a Glance
Want to Chat?
If you'd like to discuss what PSO participation would look like for you or delve into patient and provider safety challenges you are experiencing, please schedule a brief call to chat with EMS safety expert, Dan Burke, at the Center for Patient Safety.
"New models of reimbursement will invariably expose opportunities for patient safety enhancement, which will be an incredibly important part of the maturation process as we work with CMS and CMMI to further develop and deploy this model nationwide, for the benefit of all patients. With these changes EMS leaders should consider working with a Patient Safety Organization."
DR. DAVID K. TAN, MD, EMT-T, FAEMS
CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER/MEDICAL DIRECTOR AT ST. CHARLES COUNTY AMBULANCE DISTRICT (SCCAD) AND FORMER PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF EMS PHYSICIANS ® (NAEMSP®)
"The Center for Patient Safety is really starting the conversation on how organizations can focus on what it means to work together, incorporate different processes and systems and leverage the right tools and resources to evolve and grow to find better ways to keep patients safe."
DR. JAMES WOODSON
FOUNDER, PULSARA