To support patient safety when deploying a new admissions process from the emergency department, the healthcare quality professional should suggest completing a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) during the design stage. FMEA is a proactive tool used to identify potential failure points in a process and assess their impact on patient safety. By analyzing the process before it is implemented, the organization can anticipate and mitigate risks, ensuring a safer rollout of the new process.
Examining the new process for stability and variation using a control chart (A): This is typically done after implementation to monitor ongoing performance, not during the design stage.
Conducting a root cause analysis (C): Root cause analysis is reactive and used after an error has occurred, making it unsuitable for proactive safety planning.
Analyzing incident reports using a Pareto chart (D): This is useful for identifying common causes of past issues but does not directly contribute to the safety design of a new process.
Reference
NAHQ Body of Knowledge: Risk Management and FMEA
NAHQ CPHQ Exam Preparation Materials: Proactive Safety Design and FMEA

The primary purpose of a sentinel event review, particularly in the context of never events, is to identify and implement sustainable systems-based improvements.
Here's why:
Focus on Systemic Issues: Sentinel event reviews aim to uncover underlying system flaws that contributed to the event. By focusing on systems-based improvements, the organization can prevent recurrence and enhance overall safety.
Long-term Impact:
Sustainable improvements ensure that changes made as a result of the review have a lasting impact on patient safety, rather than just addressing the immediate issue.
Holistic Approach:
Addressing system-wide issues, rather than just individual performance gaps, promotes a culture of safety and continuous improvement across the organization. Compliance and Accreditation:
Regulatory bodies and accreditation organizations emphasize the importance of systems-based improvements following sentinel event reviews, aligning with best practices in patient safety.
While engaging leadership, identifying performance gaps, and monitoring involvement are important aspects of a sentinel event review, the ultimate goal is to implement changes that improve the safety of the system as a whole.
Reference: NAHQ Guide to Sentinel Event Management and Never Event Prevention NAHQ Healthcare Quality Competency Framework: Patient Safety and Risk Management

Active surveillance in healthcare is a proactive approach to identifying and monitoring health-related events or diseases123. It involves the continuous, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related data needed for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice1.
Option B, "Identifying disease outbreaks through public health contact tracing," is an example of active surveillance. Contact tracing is a key strategy for preventing the further spread of infectious diseases. It involves identifying people who have an infectious disease (cases) and their contacts (people who may have been exposed) and working with them to interrupt disease transmission12. Option A, "analyzing laboratory data for disease testing utilization," could be part of both active and passive surveillance, depending on the context. However, it does not necessarily involve the proactive steps typically associated with active surveillance13.
Option C, "analyzing infectious diseases based on hospital discharge final coding," is more related to passive surveillance, which involves the collection of data as they become available, or the data that are passively received by health care providers or health information systems13.
Option D, "reporting of infectious diseases data quarterly to local health departments," is also more related to passive surveillance, as it involves regular reporting of health data from various sources13.