2019 Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting: An Analysis of Serious Events and Incidents From the Nation's Largest Event Reporting Database

Abstract

Pennsylvania is the only state that requires healthcare facilities to report all events of harm or potential for harm. Serious Events and Incidents are reported to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS)*, which is the largest repository of patient safety data in the United States, and one of the largest in the world, with over 3.6 million acute care records. The overwhelming majority (97.1%) of all acute care event reports are Incidents. For 2019, there were 284,847 Incidents and 8,553 Serious Events for a total of 293,400 reported events. The counts of all events and the percentage that are Serious Events reported over the last eight years are provided in Figure 1. The total number of event reports has increased during the last four years. The number of reported Serious Events has increased over the past three years with the largest annual increase occurring in 2019 (+5.7%). This article will show details of the PA-PSRS acute care data along with longitudinal and categorical insights that can be used for improving patient safety.