Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 228 / Monday, November 28, 2011 / Notices 72929 

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND 

HUMAN SERVICES 

Final Effect of Designation of a Class 

of Employees for Addition to the 

Special Exposure Cohort 

AGENCY: National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health 

(NIOSH), Department of Health and 

Human Services (HHS). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: HHS gives notice concerning 

the final effect of the HHS decision to 

designate a class of employees from the 

Ames Laboratory at Iowa State 

University, as an addition to the Special 

Exposure Cohort (SEC) under the Energy 

Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000. On 

October 18, 2011, as provided for under 

42 U.S.C. 7384q(b), the Secretary of 

HHS designated the following class of 

employees as an addition to the SEC: 

All Department of Energy (DOE) 

employees, its predecessor agencies, and its 

contractors and subcontractors who worked 

in any area of the Ames Laboratory at Iowa 

State University during the period from 

August 13, 1942 through December 31, 1970, 

for a number of work days aggregating at least 

250 work days, occurring either solely under 

this employment or in combination with 

work days within the parameters established 

for one or more classes of employees 

included in the Special Exposure Cohort. 

This designation became effective on 

November 17, 2011, as provided for 

under 42 U.S.C. 7384l(14)(C). Hence, 

beginning on November 17, 2011, 

members of this class of employees, 

defined as reported in this notice, 

became members of the Special 

Exposure Cohort. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Stuart L. Hinnefeld, Director, Division 

of Compensation Analysis and Support, 

National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 

Columbia Parkway, MS C–46, 

Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone (877) 

222–7570. Information requests can also 

be submitted by email to 

DCAS@CDC.GOV. 

John Howard, 

Director, National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health. 

[FR Doc. 2011–30587 Filed 11–25–11; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4163–19–P 

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND 

HUMAN SERVICES 

Decision To Evaluate a Petition To 

Designate a Class of Employees From 

Titanium Alloys Manufacturing in 

Niagara Falls, NY, To Be Included in 

the Special Exposure Cohort 

AGENCY: National Institute for 

Occupational Safety and Health 

(NIOSH), Department of Health and 

Human Services (HHS). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: HHS gives notice as required 

by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to 

evaluate a petition to designate a class 

of employees from Titanium Alloys 

Manufacturing in Niagara Falls, New 

York, to be included in the Special 

Exposure Cohort under the Energy 

Employees Occupational Illness 

Compensation Program Act of 2000. The 

initial proposed definition for the class 

being evaluated, subject to revision as 

warranted by the evaluation, is as 

follows: 

Facility: Titanium Alloys 

Manufacturing. 

Location: Niagara Falls, New York. 

Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All 

employees who worked in any area or 

building. 

Period of Employment: January 1, 

1950 through December 31, 1956. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Stuart L. Hinnefeld, Director, Division 

of Compensation Analysis and Support, 

National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 

Columbia Parkway, MS C–46, 

Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone (877) 

222–7570. Information requests can also 

be submitted by email to 

DCAS@CDC.GOV. 

John Howard, 

Director, National Institute for Occupational 

Safety and Health. 

[FR Doc. 2011–30577 Filed 11–25–11; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4163–19–P 

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND 

HUMAN SERVICES 

Agency for Healthcare Research and 

Quality 

Agency Information Collection 

Activities: Proposed Collection; 

Comment Request 

AGENCY: Agency for Healthcare Research 

and Quality, HHS. 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: This notice announces the 

intention of the Agency for Healthcare 

Research and Quality (AHRQ) to request 

that the Office of Management and 

Budget (OMB) approve the proposed 

information collection project: ‘‘Medical 

Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture 

Comparative Database.’’ In accordance 

with the Paperwork Reduction Act, 44 

U.S.C. 3501–3521, AHRQ invites the 

public to comment on this proposed 

information collection. 

DATES: Comments on this notice must be 

received by January 27, 2012. 

ADDRESSES: Written comments should 

be submitted to: Doris Lefkowitz, 

Reports Clearance Officer, AHRQ, by 

email at doris.lefkowitz@AHRQ.hhs.gov. 

Copies of the proposed collection 

plans, data collection instruments, and 

specific details on the estimated burden 

can be obtained from the AHRQ Reports 

Clearance Officer. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Doris Lefkowitz, AHRQ Reports 

Clearance Officer, (301) 427–1477, or by 

email at doris.lefkowitz@AHRQ.hhs.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Proposed Project 

Medical Office Survey on Patient 

Safety Culture Comparative Database. 

The Agency for Healthcare Research 

and Quality (AHRQ) requests that the 

Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB) approve, under the Paperwork 

Reduction Act of 1995, AHRQ’s 

collection of information for the AHRQ 

Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety 

Culture (Medical Office SOPS) 

Comparative Database. The Medical 

Office SOPS Comparative Database 

consists of data from the AHRQ Medical 

Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture. 

Medical offices in the U.S. are asked to 

voluntarily submit data from the survey 

to AHRQ, through its contractor, Westat. 

The Medical Office SOPS Database is 

modeled after the Hospital SOPS 

Database [OMB NO. 0935–0162; 

approved 05/04/2010] that was 

originally developed by AHRQ in 2006 

in response to requests from hospitals 

interested in knowing how their patient 

safety culture survey results compare to 

those of other hospitals. 

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine 

called for health care organizations to 

develop a ‘‘culture of safety’’ such that 

their workforce and processes focus on 

improving the reliability and safety of 

care for patients (IOM, 1999; To Err is 

Human: Building a Safer Health 

System). To respond to the need for 

tools to assess patient safety culture in 

outpatient ambulatory health care, 

AHRQ developed and pilot tested the 

Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety 

Culture with OMB approval (OMB 

NO.0935–0131; Approved July 5, 2007). 


pmangrum on DSK3VPTVN1PROD with NOTICES
72930 Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 228 / Monday, November 28, 2011 / Notices 

The survey is designed to enable 

medical offices to assess provider and 

staff opinions about patient safety 

issues, medical error, and error 

reporting and includes 52 items that 

measure 12 dimensions of patient safety 

culture. AHRQ released the survey to 

the public along with a Survey User’s 

Guide and other toolkit materials in 

December 2008 on the AHRQ Web site 

(located at http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/ 

patientsafetyculture/mosurvindex.htm). 

Since its release, the survey has been 

voluntarily used by hundreds of 

medical offices in the U.S. 

The Medical Office SOPS and the 

Comparative Database are supported by 

AHRQ to meet its goals of promoting 

improvements in the quality and safety 

of health care in medical office settings. 

The survey, toolkit materials, and 

preliminary comparative database 

results are all made available to the 

public along with technical assistance 

provided by AHRQ through its 

contractor at no charge to medical 

offices, to facilitate the use of these 

materials for medical office patient 

safety and quality improvement. 

The goal of this project is to create the 

Medical Office SOPS Comparative 

Database. This database will (1) Allow 

medical offices to compare their patient 

safety culture survey results with those 

of other medical offices; (2) provide data 

to medical offices to facilitate internal 

assessment and learning in the patient 

safety improvement process; and (3) 

provide supplemental information to 

help medical offices identify their 

strengths and areas with potential for 

improvement in patient safety culture. 

De-identified data files will also be 

available to researchers conducting 

patient safety data analysis. The 

database will include 52 items that 

measure 12 areas, or composites, of 

patient safety culture. 

This study is being conducted by 

AHRQ through its contractor, Westat, 

pursuant to AHRQ’s statutory authority 

to conduct and support research on 

healthcare and on systems for the 

delivery of such care, including 

activities with respect to: The quality, 

effectiveness, efficiency, 

appropriateness and value of healthcare 

services; quality measurement and 

improvement; and database 

development. 42 U.S.C. 299a(a)(1), (2), 

and (a)(8). 

Method of Collection 

To achieve the goal of this project the 

following activities and data collections 

will be implemented: 

(1) Eligibility Form—The purpose of 

this form is to determine the eligibility 

status and initiate the registration 

process for medical offices seeking to 

voluntarily submit their MO SOPS data 

to the MO SOPS Comparative Database. 

The medical office point of contact 

(POC) will complete the form. The POC 

is either an office manager, nurse 

manager, or a survey vendor who 

contracts with a medical office to collect 

their data. The POC may submit data on 

behalf of multiple medical offices 

because many medical offices are part of 

a larger practice with multiple sites or 

part of a larger health system that 

includes many medical office sites. 

(2) Data Use Agreement—The purpose 

of this form is to obtain authorization 

from medical offices to use their 

voluntarily submitted MO SOPS data for 

analysis and reporting according to the 

terms specified in the Data Use 

Agreement (DUA). The medical office 

POC will complete the form. 

(3) Medical Office Information 

Form—The purpose of this form is to 

obtain basic information about the 

characteristics of the medical offices 

submitting their MO SOPS data to the 

MO SOPS Comparative Database (e.g., 

number of providers and staff, 

ownership, and type of specialty). The 

medical office POC will complete the 

form. 

(4) Data Submission—After the 

medical office POC has completed the 

Medical Office Eligibility Form, the Data 

Use Agreement and the Medical Office 

Information Form, they will submit 

their data from the MO SOPS to the MO 

SOPS Comparative Database. 

Data from the AHRQ Medical Office 

Survey on Patient Safety Culture are 

used to produce three types of products: 

1) A Medical Office SOPS Comparative 

Database Report that is produced 

periodically and made available to the 

public on the AHRQ Web site (see 

http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/mosurvey10/ 

moresults10.htm); 2) Medical Office 

Survey Feedback Reports that are 

confidential, customized reports 

produced for each medical office that 

submits data to the database; and 3) 

Research data sets of staff-level and 

medical office-level de-identified data 

that enable researchers to conduct 

additional analyses. 

Medical offices are asked to 

voluntarily submit their Medical Office 

SOPS data to the comparative database. 

The data are then edited to detect and 

correct errors and aggregated and used 

to produce a Comparative Database 

Report that displays averages, standard 

deviations, and percentile scores on the 

survey’s 52 items and 12 patient safety 

culture dimensions, as well as 

displaying these results by medical 

office characteristics (size of office, 

specialty, geographic region, etc.) and 

staff characteristics (staff position). 

Estimated Annual Respondent Burden 

Exhibit 1 shows the estimated 

annualized burden hours for the 

medical office to participate in the 

Medical Office SOPS Comparative 

Database. The POC completes a number 

of data submission steps and forms, 

beginning with completion of the online 

Medical Office SOPS Database 

Eligibility Form and Data Use 

Agreement, which will be completed for 

150 medical offices annually. The 

Medical Office Information Form will be 

completed for each medical office; since 

each POC represents an average of 10 

medical offices, a total of 1,500 

Information Forms will be completed 

annually, each requiring about 5 

minutes to complete. The POC will 

submit data for all of the medical offices 

they represent which will take about 4 

and 1⁄2 hours, including the amount of 

time POCs typically spend deciding 

whether to participate in the database, 

preparing their materials and data set 

for submission to the database, and 

performing the submission. The total 

annual burden hours are estimated to be 

816. 

Medical offices administer the AHRQ 

Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety 

Culture on a periodic basis. Hospitals 

submitting to the Hospital SOPS 

Comparative Database administer the 

survey every 16 months on average. 

Similarly, the number of medical office 

submissions to the database is likely to 

vary each year because medical offices 

do not administer the survey and submit 

data every year. The 150 respondents/ 

POCs shown in Exhibit 1 are based on 

an estimate. 

EXHIBIT 1—ESTIMATED ANNUALIZED BURDEN HOURS

Form name 

Number of 

respondents/ 

POCs 

Number of 

responses per 

POC 

Hours per 

response 

Total burden 

hours 

Eligibility Form ................................................................................. 150 1 3/60 8 


pmangrum on DSK3VPTVN1PROD with NOTICES
Federal Register / Vol. 76, No. 228 / Monday, November 28, 2011 / Notices 72931 

EXHIBIT 1—ESTIMATED ANNUALIZED BURDEN HOURS—Continued 

Form name 

Number of 

respondents/ 

POCs 

Number of 

responses per 

POC 

Hours per 

response 

Total burden 

hours 

Data Use Agreement ....................................................................... 150 1 3/60 8 

Medical Office Information Form ..................................................... 150 10 5/60 125 

Data Submission .............................................................................. 150 1 4.5 675 

Total .......................................................................................... 600 NA NA 816 

Exhibit 2 shows the estimated 

annualized cost burden based on the 

respondents’ time to submit their data. 

The cost burden is estimated to be 

$34,779 annually. 

EXHIBIT 2—ESTIMATED ANNUALIZED COST BURDEN

Form name Number of respondents/POCs 

Total burden 

hours 

Average hourly 

wage rate * Total cost burden 

Eligibility Form ................................................................................. 150 8 $42.62 $341 

Data Use Agreement ....................................................................... 150 8 42.62 341 

Medical Office Information Form ..................................................... 150 125 42.62 5,328 

Data Submission .............................................................................. 150 675 42.62 28,769 

Total .......................................................................................... 600 816 NA 34,779 

* Mean hourly wage rate of $42.62 for Medical and Health Services Managers (SOC code 19111) was obtained from the May 2009 National 

Industry-Specific Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, NAICS 621100—Offices of Physicians located at http://www.bls.gov/oes/2009/ 

may/naics4_621100.htm. 

Estimated Annual Cost to the 

Government 

The estimated annualized cost to the 

government for developing, 

maintaining, and managing the database 

and analyzing the data and producing 

reports is shown below. The cost is 

estimated to be $310,000 annually for 3 

years. The total cost is estimated to be 

$930,000. 

EXHIBIT 3—ESTIMATED ANNUALIZED COST

Cost component Total cost Annualized cost 

Project Development ................................................................................................................................... $59,715 $19,905 

Data Collection Activities ............................................................................................................................. 82,107 27,369 

Data Processing and Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 111,963 37,321 

Publication of Results .................................................................................................................................. 111,966 37,322 

Project Management .................................................................................................................................... 7,464 2,488 

Overhead ..................................................................................................................................................... 556,785 185,595 

Total ...................................................................................................................................................... 930,000 310,000 

Request for Comments 

In accordance with the Paperwork 

Reduction Act, comments on AHRQ’s 

information collection are requested 

with regard to any of the following: (a) 

Whether the proposed collection of 

information is necessary for the proper 

performance of AHRQ healthcare 

research and healthcare information 

dissemination functions, including 

whether the information will have 

practical utility; (b) the accuracy of 

AHRQ’s estimate of burden (including 

hours and costs) of the proposed 

collection(s) of information; (c) ways to 

enhance the quality, utility, and clarity 

of the information to be collected; and 

(d) ways to minimize the burden of the 

collection of information upon the 

respondents, including the use of 

automated collection techniques or 

other forms of information technology. 

Comments submitted in response to 

this notice will be summarized and 

included in the Agency’s subsequent 

request for OMB approval of the 

proposed information collection. All 

comments will become a matter of 

public record. 

Dated: November 7, 2011. 

Carolyn M. Clancy, 

Director. 

[FR Doc. 2011–30269 Filed 11–25–11; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 4160–90–M 

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND 

HUMAN SERVICES 

Agency for Healthcare Research and 

Quality 

Agency Information Collection 

Activities: Proposed Collection; 

Comment Request 

AGENCY: Agency for Healthcare Research 

and Quality, HHS. 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: This notice announces the 

intention of the Agency for Healthcare 

Research and Quality (AHRQ) to request 

that the Office of Management and 

Budget (OMB) approve the proposed 

information collection project: 


pmangrum on DSK3VPTVN1PROD with NOTICES