Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP)

99,000 people die due to health care-associated infections every year in the United States and nearly $28 to $33 billion are spent on these infections nationwide.

The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) was designed to improve safety culture and help clinical teams learn from mistakes by integrating safety practices into the daily work of a unit or clinical area. CUSP is implemented at the unit level and provides a scalable intervention (program) that can be implemented throughout an organization. CUSP is powerful because it provides a structured strategic framework for safety improvement that is flexible enough to tap into staff wisdom and empower staff to fix hazards that they perceive pose the greatest risks. This program draws from frontline providers who have the most knowledge regarding safety hazards and the means to lessen the severity of those hazards.  Additionally, it provides a mechanism to help defend against hazards.

Although CUSP comprises five steps, the program is a continuous process designed to incorporate an ongoing evidence-based patient safety infrastructure into an existing unit. The five steps include: