Welcome to the website of the Swiss Patient
Safety Program of the Federal Office of Public Health in Berne.
The program was started shortly after the publication of the
report "To err is human" (Institute of Medicine, 2005).
The Swiss federal government launched a public awareness program
and organized a first conference at the University Hospital
of Berne (Inselspital). A taskforce has been mandated to work
out a proposal for a national program on patient safety improvement
(Towards a Safe Healthcare System). Their results were presented
at a second conference in April 2001. In late 2003 the
Swiss Patient Safety Agency
was founded with a kick-off financing through the federal government.
“On
March 13, 2005 the federal government announced to mandate
hospitals to introduce clinical risk management (i.e. local
critical incident systems, case analysis). Further the patient
safety culture will regularly be evaluated through a hospital
staff survey and a patient survey. Additionally the federal
office of public health has launched the breakthrough program
“CleanCare”, an improvement program to reduce
infections in Swiss hospitals.”
