Measuring safety of care

Patient safety initiatives have been launched in a number of countries, mostly focusing on problem identification, learning and improvement. However, so far there has been little focus on monitoring outcomes and surveillance of development of patient safety at the organizational and system level. As a consequence, we still do not know the extent of adverse incidents or patient safety problems, just as we do not know whether the measures introduced have in fact led to improvement. The perspectives of implementing use of e.g. indicators, audits and questionnaires for systematic risk management is, that it will be possible to continuously estimate the prevalence and incidence of patient safety quality problems. The lesson learned in quality improvement is that it will pay back in terms of improvement in patient safety. For this purpose validated methods are needed.