Journal
BMC FAMILY PRACTICE
Volume 15, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
BIOMED CENTRAL LTD
DOI: 10.1186/1471-2296-15-110
Keywords
Primary health care; Consensus; Patient safety; Quality indicators
Categories
Funding
- National Institute for Health Research [SPCR-067, SPCR-S-010] Funding Source: researchfish
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Background: The majority of patient contacts occur in general practice but general practice patient safety has been poorly described and under-researched to date compared to hospital settings. Our objective was to produce a set of patient safety tools and indicators that can be used in general practices in any healthcare setting and develop a 'toolkit' of feasible patient safety measures for general practices in England. Methods: A RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method exercise was conducted with a panel of international experts in general practice patient safety. Statements were developed from an extensive systematic literature review of patient safety in general practice. We used standard RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method rating methods to identify necessary items for assessing patient safety in general practice, framed in terms of the Structure-Process-Outcome taxonomy. Items were included in the toolkit if they received an overall panel median score of >= 7 with agreement (no more than two panel members rating the statement outside a 3-point distribution around the median). Results: Of 205 identified statements, the panel rated 101 as necessary for assessing the safety of general practices. Of these 101 statements, 73 covered structures or organisational issues, 22 addressed processes and 6 focused on outcomes. Conclusions: We developed and tested tools that can lead to interventions to improve safety outcomes in general practice. This paper reports the first attempt to systematically develop a patient safety toolkit for general practice, which has the potential to improve safety, cost effectiveness and patient experience, in any healthcare system.
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