Background: Joint commission (JCI) International Patient centered standards-2011 promotes improvements in patient safety(ISPG) & Medication Management Use(MMU). OBJECTIVES: To investigate historical changes of patient-safety approach in Saudi Arabia, create comparison baseline for future studies. METHODS: Cross-sectional 2003 survey sent to pharmacy managers of 127 hospitals of Ministry of Health(MOH); 67.7% responded; data of 63.7% hospitals were valid for analysis. 19 hospitals were chosen deliberately according to their level of development, their data was tested against selected criteria. Due to limitations of data; only 2 criteria were selected: IPSG.1; identify patients correctly (criteria 1) and MMU.1& MMU.7; identify medication use & monitoring (criteria 2) Average for conforming to both criteria was calculated for each hospital. Correlation was tested between compliance to both criteria and hospital characteristics which were hospital type; general/tertiary & hospital geographical location; urban/rural. For each criterion; several measurables were selected from literature; and their average was calculated accordingly. Criteria 1; 1 measurable, composed of 2 components of which there average was calculated. Criteria 2; 2 measurables; measurable for MMU.1 composed of 3 components, while measurable for MMU.7 composed of 2 components. Average of averages was calculated. RESULTS: 89.47% were complying to criteria 1 &10.53% non-complying with 10 hospitals 100% conforming. 52.63% were complying to criteria 2& 47.37% non-complying. Average compliance percentage with criteria 1 was 97.75, 85.91& 98.25 for general rural, general urban and tertiary urban hospitals respectively. In case of criteria 2, it was 28.75, 27.18& 20.5 for general rural, general urban and tertiary urban hospitals respectively. Correlations could not be established, no significant difference in means of compliance between or within criteria for different geographical locations or different hospital types; this can be contributed to the small sample size. CONCLUSIONS: A baseline for comparison of compliance to safety-related approach in Saudi Arabia was established which can be used for comparison in future studies.