Patient Safety Final Technical Report - Spring 2019 Cycle 

For almost 20 years, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has led initiatives to measure patient safety performance, promote safe practices, and identify and reduce serious reportable events (SREs) and hospital-acquired conditions (HACs). The National Quality Forum’s (NQF) portfolio of safety measures spans a variety of topic areas. Many measures in the portfolio are used in public accountability and quality improvement programs. The Patient Safety Standing Committee oversees the NQF Patient Safety measure portfolio, evaluates newly-submitted and previously-endorsed measures against NQF's measure evaluation criteria, identifies gaps in the portfolio, provides feedback on gaps in measurement, and conducts ad hoc reviews. During the spring cycle of 2019, the Patient Safety Standing Committee evaluated eleven measures: five newly submitted measures and six measures undergoing maintenance review. This review cycle included measures related to the following key safety topics: hospital-acquired infections, mortality following hospitalization, nurses’ practice environment, antibiotic use, and electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) that assess harmful events within hospitals. The Committee endorsed nine measures, did not endorse one measure, and one measure was withdrawn by the developer. The endorsed measures did not receive any appeals.