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Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care
TABLE 9-2 AIMS Risk Assessment Index
Likelihood
Insignificant
Minor
Moderate
Major
Catastrophic
Almost Certain
Yellow
Orange
Orange
Red
Red
Likely
Yellow
Yellow
Orange
Red
Red
Possible
Green
Yellow
Yellow
Orange
Red
Unlikely
Green
Green
Yellow
Orange
Orange
Rare
Green
Green
Yellow
Orange
Orange
SOURCE: Australian Patient Safety Foundation, 2003.
0.5, or if it is less than 0.5 but the risk is high for the organization (Westat, 2001). Organizational risk is considered an effect that may result in financial loss or damaged reputation (Westat, 2001).
AHRQ has specifically stated that a risk assessment scale will be included in its DHHS integration project. The committee believes a risk assessment scale should be included in the common patient safety report format. In addition to an RAI, the committee believes that differentiating between probability and preventability is important to the analysis of events. Therefore, a method for assessing and a taxonomy for representing preventability should also be agreed upon and implemented. For example, if the event in question is a medication error that resulted from a mixup of medi-
