Title 23
Health and Safety

Chapter 17.21
The Rhode Island Patient Safety Act of 2008

§ 23-17.21-3. Legislative purpose and intent.

The general assembly proposes a Rhode Island patient safety organization that:

(a) Works with hospitals, nursing facilities, and freestanding ambulatory surgical centers for both the reporting of patient safety events including situations in which a patient safety event was averted (near misses) and evaluating the root causes of the patient safety event;

(b) Recommends to health care providers changes to improve their patient safety through investigating system causes related to the patient safety events and, on at least an annual basis, to the department for statewide changes and policies that will advance patient safety and quality improvement;

(c) Facilitates the creation and maintenance of a non-identifiable patient safety database. The database shall have the capacity to accept, aggregate, and analyze non-identifiable patient safety work product and data reported by entities and provide this to the national network of patient safety databases.