The ECRI Institute has published its second annual list of the top 10 patient safety concerns for healthcare organizations, and IT-related issues account for the top two concerns.
No. 1 on this year's Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns is alarm hazards. This includes inadequate alarm configuration policies and practices. "In addition to missed alarms that can result from excessive alarm activations, hospitals also have to be concerned about alarms that don't activate when a patient is in distress," said Rob Schluth, senior project officer at ECRI Institute, in the report.
Mr. Schluth said alarm-related adverse events often stem from alarm systems that are improperly configured. ECRI Institute suggests organizations examine alarm configuration policies and procedures to address any factors that could potentially cause alarm hazards.
The second item on this year's list of patient safety concerns is data integrity errors that result from incorrect or missing data in EHRs and IT systems.
"With the introduction of any new technology, we need to identify and respond to novel problems it presents as well as old problems that the new technology doesn't eliminate," said William Marella, executive director of operations and analytics for ECRI Institute's Patient Safety, Risk, and Quality group, in the report.
He said that while errors did exist in paper records, the current electronic format of records means these mistakes are more widely distributed, easier to share and more difficult to eliminate. "In order to get a return on the investment we've made in EHRs and clinical decision support, we now need to tackle the more mundane problem of making sure the data in the EHR is accurate," Mr. Marella said.
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