Caring about safety
Senior officials signed an agreement creating the VA Patient Safety Reporting System, in which NASA will analyze information about medical errors at VA hospitals
How will the Patient Safety Reporting System work?
A VA doctor, nurse or other staff member at a VA hospital will fill
out a form describing in narrative form the incident or close call. At the
bottom of a perforated, removable section, the person will include his or
her name and phone number.
An analyst at NASA's Ames Research Center with expertise in the medical
field (for example, a retired physician) will read the report and call the
person filing the report if there are any additional questions. The analyst
will then remove the section that identifies the person who reported the
problem and input the information into a database using standard definitions
and criteria.
Several products will be used to mine the data for patterns that may
not be immediately apparent. Advisories and newsletters, as well as full
reports and formal changes, will be produced using the data.
NEXT STORY: NASA to analyze VA errors