ECRI Institute Endorses NPSF RCA Guidelines Emphasizing Importance of Implementing and Measuring “Actions”

​ECRI Institute has endorsed new root-cause analysis (RCA) guidelines published by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) to help healthcare providers and organizations improve the way that they investigate adverse events and near misses. Developed by a panel of subject matter experts convened by NPSF, including ECRI Institute's James P. Keller, Jr., MS, vice president, international market development, RCA2: Improving Root Cause Analyses and Actions to Prevent Harm improves on the effectiveness of the traditional RCA process by adding the words "and action" and emphasizing that if actions derived from an RCA are not implemented and measured to validate their success in preventing or reducing the risk of patient harm, then the entire exercise will have been a waste of an organization's time and resources.