Patient Safety Monitoring in Acute Care in a Decentralized National Health Care System: Conceptual Framework and Initial Set of Actionable Indicators.

Objectives: Monitoring patient safety is critical for continuous quality improvement in acute care. We carried out a national project to identify a conceptual framework with core indicators that could be uniformly applied in the decentralized health system of Italy.

Methods: We used key international references to identify a framework with a core list of indicators and data sources for calculation in 4 hospitals in the Lombardy region.

Consistency of safety monitoring using routine national databases: results using a quality of care interpretative model.

Background: In the framework of targeted action for continuous safety monitoring, we aimed to evaluate the consistency of indicators derived from available databases for regular reporting.

Methods: We used a quality of care interpretative model to select characteristics from five national databases, aggregated and linked by homogeneous groups of providers. The target population included all subjects admitted to public hospitals for acute care in four regions of Italy between 2011 and 2013.