About the Program

While some progress has been made in the area of patient safety, researchers and policymakers agree that much more needs to be done. In particular, the field of outpatient safety is only now beginning to get more attention by the academic and practice communities. For example, most health care entities (e.g., health plans, hospitals, clinics) have not examined patient safety from an outpatient perspective including transitions from inpatient to outpatient settings. Preventive medicine (PM) specialists have an important role to play in advancing outpatient setting since the delivery of certain clinical preventive services clearly have patient safety implications (e.g., prompt follow-up of abnormal cancer screening results). In addition, characterizing the descriptive epidemiology of patient safety problems in the outpatient setting and developing the solutions are well suited to the population health knowledge, skills, and experience of appropriately trained PM specialists. Enroll Now