The Florida Hospital Association (FHA) and the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association (SFHHA) are working together to meet the goals of a new federal law, the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act, which will help hospitals improve patient safety.

FHA and SFHHA have formed the Patient Safety Organization of Florida (PSOFlorida). PSOFlorida will aggregate and analyze data from hospitals and then share those findings and lessons learned. By collecting data from many providers, PSOFlorida can spot problems and trends an individual hospital would be unable to detect. It also accelerates the speed with which solutions can be identified for the risks and hazards associated with patient care.

Under PSOFlorida, hospitals will be able to go online and input medical event data for analysis by the ECRI Institute, a federally Patient Safety Organization certified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ECRI Institute will provide the hospital with data collection and reporting systems, state aggregation, expert patient safety analysis, culture-of-safety recommendations and advisories.

The Patient Safety Organization of Florida started services this year after an implementation phase last fall. Teamed with the ECRI Institute, PSOFlorida has already exceeded expectations on the numbers of hospitals and health systems participating in the program. Through its secure web-based data collection and recording system, hospitals can share information, analyze data and collaborate over best practices that will protect patients from medical incidents.