Why PSOs Are Paramount in Ensuring Safe Medications, Clinical Services

In the exponentially growing technological landscape of today, bad actors and malpractice have led to a slew of security and safety risks across the health care industry. As various leaders continue to better address these potential risks, patient safety organizations (PSOs) are available all across health care to ensure patients receive safe medications, services, and general care.

“However we're building our technology and our solutions to these patient safety issues, it's based on the results of analysis [and] data, as well as best practices from the industry,” Catie Stimmel, PharmD, vice president and chief controlled substance and patient safety officer at Walgreens, told Drug Topics. “We really believe that patient safety should not be proprietary, and the more that we can share with other PSOs, the safer we're going to all be together.”

In her role at Walgreens, Stimmel works with various stakeholders across both pharmacy and health care through her organization’s PSO component—the Patient Safety Research Foundation Inc. She joined us on the most recent episode of Over the Counter to educate the Drug Topics audience on PSOs’ general functions, their importance in the greater medical community, and just what specific factors are crucial for them to operate.

Some of those factors, as Stimmel told us, include her expert opinion that PSOs—and patient safety as a whole—should be non-punitive and non-proprietary. According to her, PSOs’ value lies in their ability to record, report, document, and share information across the health care sector. Whether it be the provider who made an error in their practice or one of their peers, they should both know that PSO statutes allow for no punitive actions.

Learn about the unique regulations PSOs exist within and why they are an important yet often overlooked aspect of keeping patients safe and avoidant of adverse health care outcomes.

Stay tuned for weekly podcast episodes of Over the Counter powered by Drug Topics. Check out our most recent episode with Rick Sage, executive vice president of innovation & standards at NCPDP, who discussed the government shutdown’s impact on the pharmacy industry’s end-of-year programming.

Editor's Note: Over the Counter was released a day early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. All future episodes will be posted to Drug Topics Thursday afternoons between 2 and 3 pm ET.

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