Towards Analytics of the Patient and Family Perspective: A Case Study and Recommendations for Data Capture of Safety and Quality Concerns.

Safety reporting systems are improving our current understanding of safety in hospital settings, although mostly from the clinician perspective. Patient Family Relations (PFR) programs provide the opportunity to capture patient/family concerns in the hospital. Descriptive statistics were completed of PFR concern submissions over a 20 month period, as well as a comparison of structured data fields to those of the AHRQ Common Format. We identified statistically significant differences in rates of concern submissions, methods of submission, and role of submitter across patient populations. Overall, the most frequent concerns submitted to PFR were care/treatment and communication concerns. There was very little overlap of the PFR data elements with those of the AHRQ Common Format (overall rate of mismatch approached 80%). These results emphasize both the unique information that PFR data provides, as well as the need for enhancement and continuity of reporting systems for more effective analysis of safety data.