The Practitioner Remediation and Enhancement Partnership (PreP 4 Patient Safety) seeks to apply the cooperative model of nursing and physician health programs (also known as practitioner recovery programs, widely used by hospitals and state licensing boards to monitor and treat physicians with drug or alcohol problems,) to the problem of providers whose clinical skills are considered in need of improvement, by their peers. In the past, a number of reports have cited a reluctance to report colleagues as a major factor in the failure to discover these providers. Citizen Advocacy Center (CAC), Adminsitrators in Medicine (AIM: the Association of State Medical and Osteopathic Board Directors), and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) are working together to develop pilot sites for this program. If you have reviewed the public documents and would like to know more about becoming a pilot site, or if you have comments or questions about PREP or this site, contact us.

IOM - the Institute of Medicine, Authors of the seminal patient safety report, "To Err is Human", and Subsequent Research and Reports.
AHRQ - the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Patient Safety Section.
The Quality Interagency Task Force - the Federal group, made up of Federal Agencies such as HHS, the Department of Defense, VA, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and a wide range of other agencies who provide or review health care issues as a part of their service to the public, charged with responding to the IOM's report by President Clinton.
National Guideline Clearinghouse - an ARHQ-sponsored database of evidence-based practice guidelines online.

National Patient Safety Foundation, a part of the American Medical Association, has a great bibliography of (almost) all patient safety literature, links to many patient safety resources, and a free patient safety e-mail newsletter.
JCAHO Patient Safety Standards - The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations certifies hospitals and has recently added Patient Safety Standards to its accreditation criteria. JCAHO also requires "sentinel event" reporting by hospitals, and has an on-line "annotated sentinel event" bibliography.
Institute for Healthcare Improvement - the IHI reviews errors and accidents and develops strategies to reduce error rates.
National Quality Forum - The NQF works to to develop and implement a national strategy for healthcare quality measurement and reporting. NCQA - The National Committee for Quality Assurance accredits managed care plans and other (mostly institutional) providers based on some process and outcome measures.