The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act, signed into law on July 29, 2005, was enacted in response to growing concerns about patient safety in the United States, as highlighted in the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, which was mentioned at the beginning of this course.
The goal of The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act is to improve patient safety by encouraging voluntary and confidential reporting of events that adversely affect patients.
Along with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988, The Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 provides a means by which confidential reports contributed by healthcare providers on patient safety events can be used to identify unsafe practices that increase risks to patients.
