APRA has joined a coalition of 75 (and growing) organizations that are advancing the call to expeditiously form a new independent federal agency, the National Patient Safety Board (NPSB), to model aspects of the National Transportation Safety Board and the Commercial Aviation Safety Team within health care. The NPSB would improve and promote public health and welfare by monitoring and anticipating adverse events, creating recommendations and solutions to prevent medical error, and bringing lessons into practice.  The NSPB would model the efforts of the NTSB and CAST within health care and would complement existing agencies in monitoring and anticipating patient safety events with artificial intelligence, provide expertise to study the causes of errors, create recommendations and solutions to prevent future harms, and leverage existing systems to bring key learnings into practice. The NPSB would guarantee a data-driven, scalable approach to preventing and reducing patient safety events in healthcare settings—and will save lives.

On Wednesday, December 8, U.S. Representative Nanette Barragán (D-CA) announced the introduction of H.R.9377 – the National Patient Safety Board Act, legislation.  The text of this bill can be found here.

APRA will keep its members informed regarding coalition activities and the progress of the proposed legislation.