First experiences with patient safety initiatives in Greek rural primary care. Action research by the LINNEAUS collaboration on patient safety in primary care

Background: Accreditation of primary care organizations within Greece is still in its infancy. Our task in Greece was to attempt to introduce a patient safety initiative in a local area, focusing on developing minimum standards for accreditation, assess whether a pragmatic approach would engage physicians, and provide evidence of improvement. Objective: To use monitoring of clinical performance as the basis for the launch of an accreditation system for primary care in Greece and to report on the process and lessons learnt. Methods: An established set of clinical indicators for patient safety was introduced in five Greek primary health centres. A web-based platform, for reporting practitioners’ scores on the selected indicators, was used to record the activity of the practitioners. Results: There was considerable variation in the use of clinical indicators by individual GPs. Following the intervention, the reporting on the indicators had increased while the scores on indicators only increased slightly. However, GPs engaged with the process and recognized its relevance to improving patient safety. Conclusion: We successfully piloted a means of engaging with GPs to improve patient safety using established indicators even where there was limited infrastructure to support such initiatives.