On September 9, 2009, President Obama directed the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish an initiative to help States and health care systems test new models of care delivery, adverse event disclosure, and dispute resolution, with the joint aims of (1) putting patient safety first by reducing preventable injuries, (2) fostering better communication between doctors and patients, (3) ensuring fair and timely compensation for medical injuries while reducing malpractice litigation, and (4) reducing liability premiums.
In response, the Secretary launched the HHS Patient Safety and Medical Liability Initiative in October 2009. Under this initiative, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) funded 13 planning grants totaling $3.5 million. These funds aimed to help States, health systems, and risk management organizations plan for new programs, expand or modify existing resources, and conduct feasibility studies to explore the early phases of implementation and testing. The planning grants were originally scheduled to run for 1 year beginning in late summer 2010. Many of the grantees requested and received no-cost extensions of varying lengths. All the planning grants were completed by December 2012.
The planning grants were designed to provide initial funding to States and health systems so they could explore new initiatives that address patient safety and medical liability. Given their limited budget and time period, it was anticipated that the planning grants would result solely in preliminary findings, primarily lessons learned from laying the groundwork for future patient safety and medical liability reform projects. Details about the grantees (e.g., project titles, principal investigators, grant award amounts, goals, methods, and findings) can be found in the profiles in Appendix A.
