Table I.

The incident reporting project.

Purpose	The overall purpose of the project was to prepare general practice for the (expected) national legislation on patient safety incident reporting (making incident reporting mandatory for all health professionals in primary care) by trying out and developing an organizational model for working with incident reporting in general practice
Project management	All GP clinics in the region (approx. 200) were invited (via e-mail and a regional GP journal) to report patient safety incidents observed in the clinic, in other primary health organizations, and in the secondary sector. Also, in order to promote the concept of incident reporting and demonstrate how to use the project website, the project manager participated in regional and local GP meetings, and visited individual clinics. Due to the primary purpose of the project, the emphasis of the project manager was not on achieving widespread regional adoption, but to increase awareness of incident reporting, and to help interested clinics get started with using the reporting system
Reporting, analysis, and feedback	The core element in the reporting system was the website, which contained a short reporting formula for supplying information on the particular incident (what happened, where, and what were the consequences) and suggestions for preventive actions. Also, the website hosted general information on the project, including statistics and newsletters summarizing the themes of the submitted reports. Upon receiving a report, the project manager categorized it according to severity and place of origin. If the report concerned an incident in general practice the project manager sent a receipt to the clinic acknowledging the report and possibly asking for permission to use the case in newsletters and for educational purposes. Also, the project manager informed the practice of whether he would take any specific steps in response to the particular incident (such as contacting pharmacies, IT companies, or pharmaceutical companies). If the incident was ascribed to a hospital, the report was forwarded to the existing national and regional set-up for dealing with incidents related to the hospitals
Participation and types of incidents reported	In total, the database received 422 reports during the project. Most incidents concerned matters of medication, vaccinations, and communication/cooperation in patient transitions between providers. Due to problems with the website software, it was only possible to identify the reporting unit for half of the reports received. However, it is assumed that most reports were sent in by the 45 providers (40 GP clinics, a nursing home, a pharmacy, and three hospitals) identified in the database