It is important to track three types of measures when you are working to improve patient safety:

Outcome Measures
These measures tell you whether changes are actually leading to improvement — that is, helping to achieve the overall aim of improving patient safety. Examples of outcome measures include Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) per 1,000 Doses and Number of Cases between Surgical Site Infections.

Process Measures
To affect the outcome measure of improving patient safety, you will make changes to improve many core processes, as well as changes to improve the culture as it relates to patient safety. Measuring the results of these process changes will tell you if the changes are leading to an improved, safer system. Examples include Percentage of Staff Reporting a Positive Safety Climate, Pharmacy Interventions per 100 Admissions, and Percent of Surgical Cases with On-Time Prophylactic Antibiotic Administration.

Balancing Measures
Use these measures to make sure that changes to improve one part of the system aren’t causing new problems in other parts of the system. For example, the change of making patients responsible for checking their own medications might result in a decrease in satisfaction for some patients. For another example, when focusing on appropriate administration of prophylactic antibiotics, it is important to also monitor the Incidence of Resistant Bacterial Strains to ensure that overuse of antibiotics does not occur.

Related Patient Safety Measures:

Medication Systems

Surgical Site Infections