A new ONC-sponsored report from RAND with support from the ECRI Institute uses six case studies to reveal patient safety issues related to health IT products.
The report also identifies four challenges in identifying health IT safety risks, including:
1. Limited awareness. According to the report, many organizations do not fully appreciate the link between health IT implementation and resultant patient safety risks. This is partly due to few front-line clinicians being engaged in detecting potential IT-related safety issues.
2. Departmental separation. The traditional lack of communication and data flow between a hospital's risk management, IT and quality and safety teams can prevent issues being identified and responded to in a timely manner. These groups often work together on IT implementations, though because it is often the first time they have worked together collaboration and communication is rarely robust, according to the report.
3. Lack of tools, standards and benchmarks. Hospitals' project teams need benchmarks and metrics to help determine and mitigate IT-related risks, but available tools and metrics are often not sufficient.
4. No market incentives. Because of low levels of awareness among providers of many of the potential patient safety risks in health IT implementation and use, IT developers have little incentive to invest in ways to make their products safer. This places more importance on health IT certification processes.
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