It’s time for a National Patient Safety Board (NPSB), to monitor and anticipate adverse events in health care.

The NPSB, a proposed independent federal agency modeled in part after the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST), would identify and anticipate significant harm in health care; provide expertise to study the context and causes of harm and solutions; and create solutions to prevent patient safety events from occurring.

Using de-identified data from electronic health records, artificial intelligence, and reporting from other agencies, the NPSB would identify cause-and-effect relationships and issue timely recommendations to improve patient safety.

Like the NTSB and CAST, the NPSB’s recommendations would be bipartisan and nonpunitive … and will save lives.