When You or a Family Member Have Concerns
Your Safety is Important
Both patients and providers play a role in ensuring that healthcare services are provided safely. On occasion, patients and families have concerns or complaints with regard to their healthcare. Sharing those concerns or complaints can give providers an opportunity to make improvements in their systems and practices.
Resolving Concerns
If you have a complaint or concern with your care (or that of a family member), we strongly encourage that you first try to resolve your concerns directly with the organization that provided your care. Direct communication and dialogue can often lead to resolution for both patients and providers.
How Does the Commission Help Patients & Families?
In 2003, the Oregon legislature created the Oregon Patient Safety Commission to help protect patients from harm. The Patient Safety Commission works with health care facilities to prevent errors and medical mistakes. One way we do this is by requiring every participating facility to report to us any serious adverse event that occurs. Then we help that facility understand how it happened and plan how to keep it from happening again.
Who takes part in these reporting programs? All of Oregon’s hospitals are participants: see the hospital member list. Other facilities participating with us in a reporting program include:
A reporting program for renal dialysis facilities is also in development.
Fixing the causes of adverse health events may take a long time, and will take a lot of work by many people – including patients and their families. By learning from mistakes and making sure that everyone speaks up about possible risks, we believe we can make Oregon’s health care the safest in the nation.
