A patient safety organization has reached a conclusion which should be sobering for healthcare IT shops across the US. The ECRI Institute , a respected healthcare research organization, cited three critical health IT concerns in its list of the top 10 patient safety concerns for 2017.
ECRI has been gathering data on healthcare events and concerns since 2009, when it launched a patient safety organization. Since that time, ECRI and its partner PSOs have collected more than 1.5 million event reports, which form the basis for the list. (In other words, the list isn’t based on speculation or broad value judgments.)
In a move that won’t surprise you much, ECRI cited information management in EMRs as the top patient safety concern on its list.
To address this issue, the group suggests that healthcare organizations create cross-functional teams bringing varied perspectives to the table. This means integrating HIM professionals, IT experts and clinical engineers into patient safety, quality and risk management programs. ECRI also recommends that these organizations see that users understand EMRs, report and investigate concerns and leverage EMRs for patient safety programs.
Implementation and use of clinical decision support tools came in at third on the list, in part because the potential for patient harm is high if CDS workflows are flawed, the report says.
If healthcare organizations want to avoid these problems, they need to give a multidisciplinary team oversight of the CDS, train end users in its use and give them access to support, the safety group says. ECRI also recommends that organizations monitor the appropriateness of CDS alerts, evaluating the impact on workflow and reviewing staff responses.
Test result reporting and follow-up was ranked fourth in the list of safety issues, driven by the fact that the complexity of the process can lead to distraction and problems with follow-up.
The report recommends that healthcare organizations respond by analyzing their test reporting systems and monitor their effectiveness in triggering appropriate follow-ups. It also suggests implementing policies and procedures that make it clear who is accountable for acting on test results, encouraging two-way conversations between healthcare professionals and those involved in diagnostic testing and teaching patients how to address test information.
Patient identification issues occupied the sixth position on the list, with the discussion noting that about 9 percent of misidentification problems lead to patient injury.
Healthcare leaders should prioritize this issue, engaging clinical and nonclinical staffers in identifying barriers to safe identification processes, the ECRI report concludes. It notes that if a provider has redundant patient identification processes in place, this can increase the probability that identification problems will occur. Also, it recommends that organizations standardize technologies like electronic displays and patient identification bands, and that providers consider bar-code systems and other patient identification helps.
In addition to health IT problems, ECRI identified several clinical and process issues, including unrecognized patient deterioration, problems with managing antimicrobial drugs, opioid administration and monitoring in acute care, behavioral health issues in non-behavioral-health settings, management of new oral anticoagulants and inadequate organization systems or processes to improve safety and quality.
But clearly, resolving nagging health IT issues will be central to improving patient care. Let’s make this the year that we push past all of them!
