Participating in the SOPS® Hospital Survey Database

The AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture^® (SOPS^®) Hospital Database is a central repository for survey data from hospitals in the United States or in a U.S. territory that administered the AHRQ SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0 and choose to submit their data. The SOPS Hospital Database Report presents aggregated results for all participating hospitals as well as results by hospital and respondent characteristics. Each participating hospital also receives a feedback report comparing their results with the Database.

How To Participate in the Database

Organizations that want to participate in the Hospital Survey Database will be asked to register for an account and provide the following information: 

• Medicare Provider ID and hospital characteristics. American Hospital Association (AHA)-registered hospitals must provide their AHA ID.
• A copy of the actual survey(s) administered for review and approval.
• A Data Use Agreement, which assures hospitals about the confidentiality of their data and explains how their data will be used.
• Respondent-level survey data following the appropriate data file specifications for each hospital site. Each hospital, including those from a system, is considered a separate hospital for submission purposes and must be submitted with a unique site identification number. 

Visit the Hospital Survey Database Submission System for additional information and specifications and to register to submit data.

Hospital Survey Database Submission System

Benefits of Participating

Organizations that contribute their data to the Hospital Survey Database will receive:

• Access to free technical assistance to answer any questions and help with data submission.
• A private, customized feedback report that compares their survey results with overall findings aggregated across all organizations in the database.
• Access to database products, including:
  • The SOPS Hospital Survey Database Report (PDF, 3.7 MB) which provides overall findings and results by hospital characteristics and staff respondent characteristics.
  • The SOPS Hospital Data Entry and Analysis Tool, which enables users to enter their survey data and automatically create tables and graphs of the survey results.
  • Research datasets that provide de-identified and hospital-identifiable data for approved research purposes.

Requirements To Participate in the Database

The AHRQ SOPS Hospital Database accepts data from the following: 

• SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0, with or without supplemental items:
  • Health Information Technology Patient Safety Supplemental Items.
  • Workplace Safety Supplemental Items.
  • Value and Efficiency Supplemental Items. 

Core survey items are in Sections A–F in the SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0. The core does not include staff positions, units/work areas, and background questions at the end of the survey. 

All submissions of survey data to the SOPS Hospital Database must comply with the following guidelines: 

• The SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0 must be administered in its entirety without any changes or deletions to the item text and/or response options of the core survey (Sections A-F).
• The core survey items cannot be reordered.
• All definitions of terms, subheadings, and instructions must be included in the survey. 

• Changes can only be made to: 

  • Staff positions.
  • Units/work areas.
  • Background questions at the end of the survey. 

  If staff positions, units/work areas, and/or background questions are changed, they need to be cross-walked back to the original survey categories before submitting data.

• Background questions at the end can be deleted. 

Hospitals that administer the SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0 with any of the SOPS Hospital supplemental items must comply with the following guidelines: 

• Any SOPS Hospital supplemental items included by your facility must be inserted at the end of the core survey (after section F) and before the background questions.
• No changes can be made to the supplemental item text and/or response options.
• All composite measures and single item measures within the supplemental item can be administered, or only a subset of the measures can be administered.
  • A subset of the supplemental measures would include:
    • Selected composite measures.
      • However, ALL items within the selected composite measures must be administered.
    • Selected single item measures.
      • You can include or delete any single item measures.
  • Selected supplemental items must not be reordered.
• All definitions of terms, subheadings (re-lettering sections as needed), and instructions from the supplemental items must be included in the survey. 

To determine whether a survey is acceptable for submission to the SOPS Hospital Database prior to survey administration, email a copy of the survey to the SOPS Database team for review.

Contact Information

For free technical assistance and support, contact the SOPS Database team:

• Email: DatabasesOnSafetyCulture@westat.com
• Phone: 1-888-324-9790.