Purpose and Use of This Report

In response to requests from hospitals interested in comparing their results with those of other hospitals on the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) established the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture comparative database. Since the first annual comparative database report, which was released in 2007 and included data from 382 U.S. hospitals, the number of hospitals and respondents contributing to the database report has grown each year.

The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture 2012 User Comparative Database Report consists of data from 1,128 hospitals and 567,703 hospital staff respondents who completed the survey. The 1,128 hospitals in the 2012 report fall into two categories:

• 508 hospitals from the previous database report that are still included in the 2012 report.
• 620 hospitals that submitted data for the 2012 report.

Hospitals do not necessarily administer the hospital patient safety culture survey every year. They may administer it on an 18-month, 24-month, or other cycle. Therefore, the comparative database is a "rolling" indicator. It retains data for up to 3.5 prior years when a hospital does not have new data to submit, replaces older data with more recent data when available, and adds data from hospitals submitting for the first time.

This user comparative database report was developed as a tool for the following purposes:

• Comparison—To allow hospitals to compare their patient safety culture survey results with those of other hospitals.
• Assessment and Learning—To provide data to hospitals to facilitate internal assessment and learning in the patient safety improvement process.
• Supplemental Information—To provide supplemental information to help hospitals identify their strengths and areas with potential for improvement in patient safety culture.
• Trending—To provide data that describe changes in patient safety culture over time.

The report presents statistics (averages, standard deviations, minimum and maximum scores, and percentiles) on the patient safety culture composites and items from the survey. This 2012 report also includes a trending chapter that describes patient safety culture change over time for 650 hospitals with data from two administrations of the survey.

Appendixes A and B present overall results by hospital characteristics (bed size, teaching status, ownership and control, geographic region) and respondent characteristics (hospital work area/unit, staff position, interaction with patients). Appendixes C and D show trend results for the 650 trending hospitals, broken down by hospital characteristics (bed size, teaching status, ownership and control, and geographic region) in Appendix C and respondent characteristics (hospital work area/unit, staff position, interaction with patients) in Appendix D.

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