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

The NPSB, a proposed independent federal board housed in the Department of Health and Human Services, modeled in part after the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), would identify and anticipate significant harm in health care; provide expertise to understand the causes and precursors to harm; and create solutions to prevent patient safety events.

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