title: Quality and Safety in Health Care, Part XXI: PSOs and the Vascular Quality Initiative.
abstract: Congress provided for the formation of patient safety organizations (PSOs) so that physicians and other providers would come forward to improve the safety and quality of health care. Important legal safeguards for the providers and patients were put in place for PSOs. The Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) PSO operates the Vascular Quality Initiative. The latter gathers information from certain commonly done vascular procedures. First, information is collected so a risk adjustment determination of each individual patient can be done. Then the details of every procedure are recorded for later analysis of the processes of the patient's care. In addition, outcome analysis from all procedures is carried out. This registry is an important source of data for research improving health care safety and quality.
authors.affiliation: From the Advanced Radiology Services and the Division of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, College of Human Services, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI.
authors.forename: Jay A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Harolds
mesh_terms: D003226:Congresses as Topic; D006801:Humans; D061214:Patient Safety / Q000592:standards*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic / Q000592:standards*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D012955:Societies, Medical; D014656:Vascular Surgical Procedures / Q000592:standards*