Patient Safety Indicators at an academic veterans affairs hospital: addressing dual goals of clinical care and validity.
Patient safety indicators (PSIs) are designed to assess the frequency, severity, and impact of measurable harm in healthcare. In this study, one Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital implemented three clinical care and two accurate data capture interventions to improve rates of the composite PSI-90 and three individual PSIs (pressure ulcers, postoperative PE/DVT, and postoperative sepsis). Postoperative PE/DVT, postoperative sepsis, and composite PSI-90 all decreased, while pressure ulcer rates increased.