AHRQ Patient Safety Network

Safe Practices for Better Healthcare–2009 Update.

National Quality Forum. Washington, DC: National Quality Forum; 2009.

The National Quality Forum's Safe Practices for Better Healthcare provide a blueprint for organizations to improve the quality and safety of patient care. The practices are organized into seven content areas: establishing leadership structures and systems, improving safety culture, honoring patient's wishes for informed consent and error disclosure, matching health care needs with delivery capacity, facilitating information transfer and clear communication between providers, managing medications safely, preventing health care–associated infections, and implementing safe practices for specific clinical conditions and sites of care. Since the last update in 2006, seven new practices have been added and others retired. The practices are defined so that organizations can measure the relationship between implementation of the practices and patient safety outcomes.

Information