To our knowledge this is the first Patient Safety mobile app for the smartphone and tablet developed for use by patients, or their families to communicate hospital/medical incident reports, Patient safety complaints, near misses, or other patient safety adverse events.

The WHO has called for an international effort to reduce patient safety errors and estimates that globally there are millions of patients each year harmed by unsafe medical care and perhaps 1 in 10 patients may be harmed in advanced hospital settings. In the United States, the 2010 report of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) estimated that 1 in 7 Medicare patients experienced adverse events related to hospital care. The report estimated that 44% of these events were clearly or likely preventable and hospital care costs related to these events were an estimated $324 million in 2008.

This app is unique in that it has been developed by a physician who is in full time clinical and surgical practice and has over a decade of medical leadership experience involving the review of medical and surgical patient safety complaints and incident reports at a major acute care hospital. It has been developed using an amalgamation of criteria and guidelines as suggested by the WHO, JCAHO, CMS, CDC, and AHRQ. The app advocates users to follow the policies of their hospital where the safety issue occurred and report the event to the respective patient safety administrator.

However, in an increasingly complex environment of health care, patients are asked to navigate hospital settings that are complex and they may find it difficult to communicate patient safety events or quality of care issues to the hospital staff or administrator. In order to enable patients and family members to communicate the concerns of the care they received in a hospital setting, this app allows for their message to be sent to the local State or Province health department for further review according to the local health guidelines and jurisdiction.

This app has pre-populated State health dept. emails for patients within the United States. Patients outside the U.S. can also use the app if they know their respective State or Province QA administrator’s email to type in the Patient Safety Report Screen. The app also provides educational content and references to learn more about patient safety. There is also Literature Search option as an in-app purchase for those users who wish to learn more about specific key words related to their incident report.

Join the movement to help patient safety by downloading and using this free app. We welcome and encourage your input. Please send comments and suggestions to us at support@patientsafeside.com