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AHRQ listed Patient Safety Organization

AHRQ-Listed Patient Safety Organization (PSO) for
Clinical Debriefing

Protect debriefings as Patient Safety Work Product (PSWP) under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (PSQIA) - and improve outcomes faster using your team’s most actionable insights.

The Advancing Healthcare Debriefing Quality Patient Safety Organization (AHDQ PSO) is a federally-listed PSO authorized by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that helps healthcare organizations to provide safer care with:
 

  • PSO membership

  • PSWP protection: debriefings, deliberations, and analyses

  • CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM): attestation verification

  • Debriefing program support:  toolkits, coaching, and implementation playbooks

  • Advanced learning from your data: analytics, reports, and actionable dashboards

  • Expert coaching:  1-on-1 support from a clinical debriefing expert tailored to your goals

  • National & Global advocacy: promoting debriefing  in healthcare (eg, World Debriefing Day & more)

AHDQ PSO Mission

Our mission is to help healthcare teams to debrief smarter and improve faster. 

 

We are the only PSO focused exclusively on leveraging debriefings and systems-based analysis to drive quality improvement and reduce preventable harm. We support healthcare professionals and organizations by providing a legally protected environment for reporting, reviewing, and learning from healthcare events.

What is a debrief?          A clinical debriefing is a safe, structured team conversation that reviews an event’s actions and thought processes to discover insights that improve future care.  Most published healthcare debriefing tools are used shortly after clinical events within the same shift, take several minutes to complete, and can be led by a care team member.

 

Clinical debriefings are associated with improvements in: 

  • Patient outcomes (e.g., mortality, neurologic outcomes)

  • Team member outcomes (e.g., burnout, intention to leave their job, safety culture surveys)

  • Operational cost savings (e.g., labor hours, length of stay)

  • Reduced risk and liabilities.
     

What is a PSO?          Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) were established under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 to create a secure environment for healthcare providers to voluntarily report and analyze patient safety events without fear of legal exposure. Listed PSOs are authorized by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and overseen by AHRQ. Learn more at https://pso.ahrq.gov.
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AHDQ PSO Goals

  • Protect debriefing data—plus the deliberations that follow. We help you incorporate and protect debriefing information across formats and systems (e.g., spreadsheets, PDFs, incident reporting exports such as RL6, and StatDebrief data), along with the related review, deliberation, analysis, and learning outputs generated after your hospital's debriefings

  • Promote effective debriefing implementation to support safer care for both patients and healthcare workers.

  • Provide customized insights into trends, contributing factors, and systemic vulnerabilities that impact outcomes for your patients and teams across your organization.

  • Facilitate collaborative learning at the national level by sharing aggregated, de-identified insights from post-event debriefings and debriefing-program operational data.

  • Disseminate best practices and tailored feedback to participating providers to help them achieve local and national patient safety goals.

  • Support CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) attestation with PSO participation verification.

Benefits of AHDQ PSO Participation

Improving Safety for Patients and Healthcare Workers
We help participating providers identify patterns, prevent future harm, and implement systems-level improvements, using a variety of debriefing formats. We have  developed specialized debriefing protocols that help healthcare teams learn from adverse events, near-misses, and clinical successes in a constructive, non-punitive environment. 
 
Expert Guidance
Our team includes professionals with expertise in clinical medicine, patient safety, quality improvement, analytics, and healthcare data security. We deliver customized reports and offer guidance rooted in evidence-based improvement strategies.
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Collaborative Learning Network
By contributing to a secure, protected data repository, providers join a learning network where aggregated insights support shared problem-solving and collective advancement in safety culture. By aggregating and analyzing data at the national level, we can detect patterns and trends that may not be visible when examining smaller datasets from individual healthcare organizations.
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Confidentiality and Legal Protections
All patient safety activities conducted through AHDQ PSO are protected under the Patient Safety Act. Providers who work with AHDQ PSO enjoy robust federal confidentiality and privilege protections, allowing open discussion and reporting without fear of legal discovery.
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Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) Attestation​​
On August 1, 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) established the Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) for acute care hospitals. The PSSM is an attestation-based requirement for hospitals to demonstrate they have 25 best practices in place across five domains that prioritize patient safety and aim to eliminate preventable harm.  U.S.hospitals  participating in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program and the Prospective Payment System (PPS)-Exempt Cancer Hospital Quality Reporting (PCHQR ) will annually attest to their safety activities and will earn one point for each domain that has all five best practices in place. Hospitals will begin annual attestations in the Spring of 2026 to determine whether PSSM activities occurred at any time during the previous calendar year. Hospital PSSM scores (0 to 5 points) will be published on the CMS Care Compare website in Fall 2026. Hospitals that do not submit their PSSM data will face reduced Medicare payments beginning in Fiscal Year 2027.

By contracting with the AHDQ PSO, hospitals would meet the PSSM best practice :​

Use of the patient safety software StatDebrief platform is not required for participation in the AHDQ PSO, but hospitals that do use the platform could also meet 4 more of the 25 PSSM best practices, including:
  • Domain #1  (Leadership Commitment, Statement C: technology resources to support patient safety)
  • Domain #2 (Strategic Planning, Statement E:  workplace safety improvements)
  • Domain #3 (Culture of Safety, Statement D: four high reliability criteria - technology to promote safety, high reliability organization frameworks, team communication tools in healthcare, and human factors engineering
  • Domain #3 (Culture of Safety, Statement E: learning network)
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Free PSSM Calculator
Ready to assess your hospital's PSSM readiness across all five domains?
The AHDQ PSO PSSM Calculator and Readiness Checklist:

  • Guides you through all 25 verbatim attestation statements

  • Scores your readiness across all five domains

  • Identifies your highest-priority gaps

  • Provides tools so you can attest before the April 1 to May 15 attestation window opens.
    Take the Free PSSM Calculator and Readiness Checklist →

How to Join AHDQ PSO

Healthcare organizations that wish to participate would sign a membership agreement and pay an annual membership fee.
The AHDQ PSO is operating as a component of StatDebrief. 
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Interested in learning more about how AHDQ PSO can support your safety goals? 


Click the "Request PSO Info" button below or email info@ahdq.org 

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