North American Partners in Anesthesia (NAPA) Produces Award-Winning Anesthesia Risk Alerts Program, an Effective Safety Intervention for High-Risk Patients

Seeking to reduce the incidence of critical events in high-risk patients, the NAPA Anesthesia Patient Safety Institute (NAPSI)—NAPA’s certified Patient Safety Organization (PSO)—conducted a systemwide review of NAPA’s adverse events data. NAPA maintains one of the nation’s largest anesthesia clinical outcomes databases, comprising data from more than 2 million patients each year served by NAPA’s nearly 5,000 clinicians.  As one of roughly 100 PSOs federally certified by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, NAPSI is approved to use clinical outcomes data for analysis and performance improvement activities.

This research identified five high-risk clinical scenarios that contributed to significant adverse events at healthcare institutions nationwide. Combining data with clinical expertise, NAPSI developed the Anesthesia Risk Alerts (ARA) program in 2019. This patient safety intervention was implemented at all NAPA clinical sites across 22 states.

As a novel approach to mitigating operating room (OR) risk, the ARA program was honored for national level innovation in patient safety and quality with a 2022 Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award by The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum.

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