AMA urges physicians to contact their U.S. senators to voice support for a patient safety bill

The AMA urges all physicians to contact their U.S. senators to voice their support for a patient safety bill that the Senate is expected to act on soon. The House passed this legislation by a wide margin in 2002.

S. 720 would create a system in which health care professionals and organizations would share and analyze information about health care errors to prevent similar incidents. The bill would establish a voluntary reporting system where physicians, hospitals and other health care providers could report information on errors to Patient Safety Organizations (PSO) that would confidentially collect and analyze the information. The PSO would provide patient safety improvement strategies based on the data.

The legislation would not affect other information legally collected from sources other than the PSO, and it would not preempt other state and federal peer review laws. In accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the bill would preserve the protection of confidential patient information and, unrelated to the act, provide for appropriate penalties for unlawful disclosures.