Education, Awareness, and Accreditation to Improve Patient Safety and the Quality of Patient Care
The Physician-Patient Alliance for Health & Safety (PPAHS), a 501c3 nonprofit, is an internationally-ranked top-100 patient safety organization (Agilience, October 2022). PPAHS works to advance patient health and safety by developing and highlighting best practices and recommendations through better use and application of clinical practices and experiences, information technologies and checklists, and healthcare information.
A key way PPAHS improves patient safety and the quality of patient care is by:
- Identifying unmet needs in healthcare and the new innovations (best practices, research, and technologies) that address these patient safety and patient care gaps.
- Educating healthcare professionals and patients about the new innovations that address these unmet needs.
We believe that patient safety is healthcare’s ultimate win-win scenario:
- Patients suffer from fewer adverse events and consequently get better care.
- Clinicians and hospitals experience fewer malpractice claims and can devote all of their attention to practicing medicine and providing optimal patient care.
Please read our 10th-annversary report to see what we’ve been up to in our first 10 years.
Education adds value to our healthcare system and plays a critical role in driving awareness, increasing understanding, and affecting change.
PPAHS is an accredited provider of continuing medical education. PPAHS identifies, promotes, educates, and certifies clinicians in best practices that promote patient safety and improve the quality of patient care. For more about our educational efforts, please visit our Learning Center.
Who Is PPAHS?
Patient Safety Initiatives
According to a World Health Organization, occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world. Moreover, in high income countries like the United States, it is estimated that one in every 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care. The harm can be caused by a range of adverse events, with nearly 50% of them being preventable.
As defined by the American Board of Preventive Medicine, patient safety is “the prevention of harm to patients.” In a safe ecosystem, emphasis is placed on the system of care delivery that:
- Prevents errors;
- Learns from the errors that do occur; and
- Is built on a culture of safety that involves health care professionals, organizations, and patients.
With the goal of reducing adverse events, PPAHS has been actively involved in the following patient safety issues:
Sponsors
Financial support for this website and PPAHS activities have been provided by individuals and volunteers from the US and around the world, as well as unrestricted educational grants from pharmaceuticals, medical device companies, and medical societies:
Our Cardiovascular Partners
American Heart Association
Our Corporate Sponsors
I paid for an L4 L5 decompression surgery and received a free partial right L4 L5 discectomy. I would learn that the surgeon surgically altered the L3 spinal processes and this was not documented. I would not recover and receive no benefit from the surgery and would learned that there should have been more testing prior to surgery and when I failed to recover after surgery. I fled to a different province and would receive reassuring words from clinicians stating “don’t be too hard on yourself… The surgeon had a responsibility to perform adequate testing before and after surgery”.
The surgeon joke about having to check to make sure he didn’t operate on the wrong surgical site but never admitted that he surgically altered the L3 spinal processes until I discovered it myself. Feeling to recover has meant the use of more finite healthcare resources taken from the public healthcare sector.
Leaving the province of Alberta was wise and I would have a defecogram, Neurogram and additional testing indicating that my issues, my original symptoms may very well not have been Spinal in nature.
Although healthcare providers are not critical of one another, I sense my current healthcare providers in another province are somewhat stunned regarding the care I received in Calgary and I would imagine there’s somewhat resentful having to clean up someone else’s mess.
Public health care in Canada may be slow but they provide adequate testing to ensure optimal surgical outcomes. Private pay surgery is after the money at the expense of patient centred care and patient safety.
Perhaps I’ll comment upon my own posting.
I paid for unnecessary spinal surgery in Calgary, Alberta, and I questioned the surgeon’s lack of documentation.
I presented the surgeon with an MRI that identified the wrong surgical site; an MRI at a sit down MRI facility in British Columbia.
I would be diagnosed with sacral insufficiency fractures in Calgary that do not exist in eastern Canada. Why is that?
Rather than sacral insufficiency fractures, I have a well defined, diffuse hazy area pressing to the left of my bowels and they believe this haziness is my small bowels after it was determined that I have a left hamstring tear.
Patients, particularly women and marginalized individuals, often have their symptoms gaslighted, and these new findings… We’re not new at all… They were simply kept from me for 3 years.
It’s time for a peer review for various clinicians and to Foster an environment that promotes patient safety and patient centred care delivered with generosity, transparency and integrity.
Thank you for your post, it is very helpful to patients, please continue
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