NPSF Adds ACTION into RCA Process

The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) recently released a report that provides guidelines to help healthcare professionals better use root cause analysis (RCA) in determining why adverse events and near misses occur.

The report is titled, RCA²: Improving Root Cause Analyses and Actions to Prevent Harm.  Researchers explained that the second “A” in the title stands for “action” because unless providers take real action to address underlying causes of harm, analyses of such events are meaningless.

The report addresses components integral to patient safety and the root cause analysis process including how to: triage adverse events and close calls, determine RCA team size and membership, develop outcome measures and more.  To download NPSF’s full report, click here.