Patients for Patient Safety US launches PIVOT DX on diagnostic safety

Patients for Patient Safety US announced PIVOT DX, a national effort to turn patient experiences into validated measures of diagnostic safety and care quality. The initiative will debut with a Washington workshop and could shape surveys, performance measurement, payment models and patient-centered research.

Why it matters: - Diagnostic harm often shows up in patient experiences before it appears in traditional data. - PIVOT DX aims to give patients a direct role in defining what safe, timely and equitable diagnosis should be measured against. - The initiative could influence national surveys, payment models and research by adding patient-defined measures to existing clinical and safety metrics.

What happened: - Patients for Patient Safety US announced PIVOT DX, short for Patients Involved in Developing Outcomes Together for Diagnostic Excellence. - The national initiative brings together patients, patient organizations and other stakeholders to advance patient-reported measures of diagnostic safety and experience. - PIVOT DX will launch with a national workshop Sept. 14-16, 2026, in Washington, DC. - The workshop will include patients and care partners, clinicians, diagnostic safety experts, researchers, health system leaders, measurement experts, policymakers, patient safety organizations and technology organizations.

The details: - PIVOT DX builds on Project PIVOT, a prior patient-led effort focused on what matters most in safe, timely and equitable healthcare. - Project PIVOT produced more than 40 potential patient-reported experience and outcome survey questions. - Those questions address diagnostic safety, communication, dismissal of patient concerns, care biases and the physical, emotional and financial consequences of missed, incorrect and delayed diagnoses. - PIVOT DX will review, prioritize, refine and validate those patient-defined measures. - The initiative will also examine how to move the measures from patient experience into healthcare measurement and action. - The long-term goal is to integrate validated PIVOT DX measures into national patient surveys, performance measurement, value-based payment and alternative payment models, and patient-centered research. - National patient surveys could use the measures to complement existing questions with patient-defined dimensions of diagnostic safety and experience. - Performance measurement could combine the patient perspective with clinical, administrative and safety-event data. - Value-based payment and alternative payment models could align incentives with outcomes that matter to patients. - Patient-centered research could use the measures as meaningful outcomes for comparative effectiveness and implementation studies.

Between the lines: - The initiative reflects a shift from measuring whether patients were satisfied to measuring whether care was actually safe. - PIVOT DX also signals an effort to make patient experience data usable in systems that drive payment, quality improvement and policy. - That could expand the role of patients from survey respondents to co-designers of diagnostic safety metrics.

What's next: - The Sept. 14-16 workshop will begin the review, prioritization, refinement and validation process. - PFPS US expects the effort to move validated measures toward broader use in surveys, performance systems, payment models and research. - Susan E. Sheridan said the goal is to turn patient experiences into measures that can drive improvement, research, policy and payment.