The relationship between hospital patient safety culture and performance on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services value-based purchasing metrics.

Background: Despite the intense policy focus on reducing health-care-associated conditions, adverse events in health care settings persist. Therefore, evaluating patient safety efforts and related health policy initiatives remains critical.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between hospital patient safety culture and hospital performance on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) metrics.

Methodology/approach: A pooled cross-sectional study design was used utilizing three secondary datasets from 2018 and 2021: the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, the American Hospital Association annual survey, and the Hospital Compare data from CMS. We used two multivariable linear regression models to examine the relationship between organizational patient safety culture and hospital performance. The dependent variables included the overall CMS total performance score (TPS) and the four individual TPS domain scores. Hospital patient safety culture, the independent variable, was operationalized using two measures from the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture: (a) the domain score of overall perceptions of patient safety and (b) the patient safety grade.

Results: We observed positive and significant associations between hospital patient safety culture and a hospital's overall TPS and the "patient and community engagement" and "safety" domains.

Conclusion: Findings suggest that building a strong patient safety culture has the potential to lead health care organizations to achieve high performance on HVBP metrics.

Practice implications: Our findings have important policy implications for both the future of CMS HVBP as a motivator of patient safety and how health care managers integrate culture change into programs to meet external quality metrics.