The Patient Safety Privacy Protection Center (PSOPPC) has received many questions regarding Common Formats. In response to those questions, the PSOPPC has produced a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and corresponding answers.
What are the Common Formats?
AHRQ's Common Formats are a set of standardized definitions and formats that make it possible to collect, aggregate, and analyze uniformly structured information about patient safety for local, regional, and national learning. They have been developed for use by healthcare providers that choose to work with patient safety organizations (PSOs) listed by AHRQ under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (Patient Safety Act). The Common Formats are also available in the public domain to encourage their widespread adoption. An entity does not need to be listed as a PSO or working with one to use the Common Formats. However, the Federal privilege and confidentiality protections only apply to information developed as patient safety work product by providers and PSOs working under the Patient Safety Act.
AHRQ has developed Common Formats for Event Reporting for several healthcare settings and event types. AHRQ has also developed Common Formats for Surveillance and continues to work on developing new Common Formats.
Why use AHRQ Common Formats?
PSOs are required to collect and analyze patient safety work product in a standardized manner to the extent practical and appropriate, to permit valid comparisons of similar cases among similar providers. Using the AHRQ Common Formats (common definitions and reporting formats) makes it possible to collect, aggregate, and analyze uniformly structured information about patient safety for local, regional, and national learning.
What are the Common Formats for Event Reporting (CFER)?
Generally, the CFER can be used for:
- Incidents: patient safety events that reached the patient, whether or not there was harm involved.
- Near misses (or close calls): patient safety events that did not reach the patient.
- Unsafe conditions: circumstances that increase the probability of a patient safety event occurring.
Currently, there are CFER that include several event-specific modules for hospitals (CFER-H) and nursing homes (CFER-NH). There is also a CFER designed for community pharmacies (CFER-CP) and a CFER for diagnostic safety (CFER-DS) designed for use in any healthcare setting.
What are the Common Formats for Event Reporting Diagnostic Safety (CFER-DS)?
The CFER-DS is designed to help healthcare providers collect data for analysis of Diagnostic Safety Events in a standardized manner across healthcare settings and specialties for the purpose of learning about how to improve diagnostic safety and better support clinicians in the diagnostic process. It is intended to facilitate the collection and organization of a basic set of meaningful data about diagnostic safety events that can be used, aggregated, and analyzed for learning and improvement. Having a common frame of reference and standardized data elements makes shared learning possible at local, regional, and national levels.
What are the Common Formats for Surveillance?
The Common Formats for Surveillance - Hospital (CFS-H) is a set of event descriptions
defined for the retrospective review of medical records to identify whether certain patient safety events occurred.
This Common Formats is designed to provide information that is complementary to that derived from event reporting systems.
The term "surveillance" in this context refers to the improved detection of events and calculation of adverse event rates in populations reviewed
that will facilitate collection of comparable performance data over time and across populations of patients.
Common Formats for Surveillance - Hospital V1.0 (CFS-H),
which includes event descriptions, is currently available for public review and comment.
The structured modules contained in the Surveillance version are operationalized in AHRQ's
Quality and Safety Review System (QSRS).
What are the most current Common Formats versions?
The following Common Formats versions are active and available for implementation and use by healthcare providers and PSOs:
PSOs may send data from these versions to the PSOPPC for de-identification and submission to the Network of Patient Safety Databases (NPSD). CFER-DS V1.0, released in May 2022, is the first version of Common Formats for Diagnostic Safety. Providers and PSOs can begin use of it at any time.
What is included in the AHRQ Common Formats?
The final set of Common Formats include:
- Users Guide
- Event Descriptions
- Forms (only available for some Common Formats and versions)
- CDA XML File Samples
- A Data Dictionary which defines the data elements
- A Clinical Document Architecture Implementation Guide, which shows how to enable electronic transmission of the Common Formats data
- The Validation Rules and Errors Guide; Common Format Flow Charts; and specifications for processing, linking and reporting on events
- A Metadata registry with data element attributes and technical specifications for use by developers.
How can I provide feedback on the Common Formats?
Development of the Common Formats is an ongoing process. AHRQ welcomes feedback, especially from all users, to improve the current Common Formats and inform the development of new types of Common Formats.
Any comments on the Common Formats versions that are active for reporting can be submitted through the
Common Formats Commenting Tool.
