Over the past several years, the federal government has made major investments in the use of electronic health records (EHRs) with the intent of paving the way for better and more efficient care. Yet the journey of implementing EHRs has uncovered many unexpected challenges and unintended consequences. For example, a number of studies point out that the EHR and other forms of health information technology can contribute to patient harm, such as missed and significantly delayed diagnoses.
Unlike some other technologies such as x-rays, health IT is not limited to a particular clinical department or setting. Rather, it underpins all care. It is everywhere and involves everyone. With the rapid spread of EHRs and related health IT across all care settings, there is a crucial need to examine all of the possible contributing factors to safety issues and to create effective practices for achieving safe design, implementation and use of health IT.
In 2013, the ECRI Institute convened the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety to address health IT safety challenges. In the short time since, the partnership has become the focal point for the collaborative efforts of many groups, including health care providers, health IT developers, academic researchers, patient safety organizations, medical malpractice insurers and professional societies. Collectively the group developed a process for creating best practices and earlier this year released its first set of recommendations Health IT Safe Practices: Toolkit for the Safe Use of Copy and Paste.
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is supporting the ECRI Institute’s Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety to expand upon its work. Specifically to broaden participation in the partnership, enhance data collection and analytics to accelerate learning on a larger scale, and to design, develop and disseminate health IT safety practices.
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