A formal patient safety infrastructure helps hospitals and telemedicine partners review, learn from, and improve care together.
Patient Safety as a Partnership Standard
Access TeleCare has always been committed to patient safety but took that commitment even further when they became certified as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) in November 2021, with The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Any healthcare organization that partners with Access TeleCare to deliver care benefits from our deep commitment to clinical quality and excellence and our focus on delivering care with patient safety at the forefront.
What It Means to Be a Patient Safety Organization
A PSO helps clinicians voluntarily report, aggregate, and analyze patient safety information so they can improve quality and outcomes and reduce medical errors. PSOs were created as part of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005. Often referred to as the Patient Safety Act. They create a legally secure environment (granting privilege and confidentiality) to report, aggregate and analyze data with the goal of improving patient care and safety. Currently, there are 127 active PSOs registered with AHRQ, and they work with all provider types across the care delivery continuum.
A PSO creates something similar to a clinical flight recorder. It doesn’t prevent turbulence by itself, but it gives teams a protected way to examine what happened, where the system strained, and what should change before the next flight.
That structure becomes especially important when care crosses physical and virtual teams.
Why PSO Status Matters for Hospital Partners
Hospital partners need telemedicine partners that can participate in quality and safety work with the same commitment as an onsite clinical service. A consult may happen virtually, but the patient, the bedside team, the documentation, the escalation pathway, and the outcome all live inside the hospital’s care environment.
Access TeleCare’s PSO framework supports collaboration around patient safety event reporting, joint Root Cause Analyses, safe table discussions, trend review, and performance improvement. Instead of reviewing issues in silos, hospitals and Access TeleCare can examine the full care pathway together.
That matters when the issue is not simply “what did one clinician do?” but “where did the process break down?” Was there a delay in escalation? A documentation gap? A workflow mismatch? A communication issue between bedside and remote teams?
Those are the questions that improve systems, not just individual cases.
While there are numerous advantages to PSO protections, there are a few that directly benefit our clinicians, clients and patients.
Patient Safety Event Reporting
- Encourages a culture of safety which includes open reporting and analyzing errors and near misses to prevent future harm.
- Process for clients reporting events that involve Access TeleCare clinicians or processes.
- Patient safety event reporting system that includes intake, issue resolution, improvement, and loop closure.
- Weekly patient safety huddles.
- Each event is reviewed by leadership and clinicians who specialize in the service line.
Collaborative Safe Tables
- A confidential forum to discuss patient safety events, near misses, process improvements, and best practices, with our clients in a collaborative, safe and PSO protected environment.
- Encourages open dialogue, shared learning, and a culture of trust among participants.
- Safe Tables strive to construct mutually agreeable process improvements action plans.
Expert Perspective: Patricia D. Griffin, RN, FACHE
“Patient safety in telemedicine has to be active, structured, and embedded in the way care is delivered,” said Patricia D. Griffin, RN, FACHE, vice president of quality and safety at Access TeleCare. “Our designation as a Patient Safety Organization confirms that we have a rigorous framework to work with hospital partners in a way that supports transparency, learning, and accountability. The goal is not just to review individual events. It’s to understand the system, strengthen the process, and improve care for the next patient.”
How This Supports Quality in Virtual Care
Virtual care involves multiple teams, technologies, workflows, and handoffs. The stronger the quality structure, the easier it is to identify issues before they become patterns.
Access TeleCare supports hospital partners through quality initiatives that may include professional practice evaluations, credentialing by proxy support, accreditation visit support, committee participation, clinical education, and program outcome data.
That work helps connect telemedicine programs to the hospital’s broader quality goals. For example, a teleStroke program may need to support response-time expectations, documentation standards, stroke certification readiness, and multidisciplinary case review. A teleInfectious Disease program may need to align with antimicrobial stewardship priorities. A teleHospitalist program may need to support throughput, utilization review, and safe admissions from the emergency department.
Connection to Broader Quality Infrastructure
Access TeleCare’s PSO status is part of a larger quality and safety foundation. The company has maintained continuous accreditation with The Joint Commission and works across acute specialty telemedicine programs serving hospitals and health systems nationwide. Access TeleCare has deployed more than 2,600 programs and serves approximately 1 in 5 U.S. hospitals.
What Hospital Leaders Should Take Away
Access TeleCare’s PSO status gives hospital leaders a clearer way to evaluate virtual care partnership beyond coverage alone.
It signals that Access TeleCare is prepared to participate in structured safety reviews, shared quality improvement, clinical governance, and performance conversations that matter to hospital operations.
It also reinforces a larger point: telemedicine should not sit outside the hospital’s quality infrastructure. It should be part of it.
Safer Systems, Stronger Partnerships
Hospitals are being asked to do more with fewer resources, tighter margins, and persistent specialty shortages. Telemedicine can help meet that demand, but only when access is paired with quality and safety infrastructure.
Access TeleCare’s PSO helps create that structure. For hospital leaders, it offers a more formal way to learn from events, strengthen workflows, and improve virtual care programs over time.
Because in the end, the goal is safer care, stronger systems, and better outcomes for the patients and teams relying on them.
