The Bipartisan Policy Center http://bipartisanpolicy.org sponsored the “Promoting Innovation: Protecting Patient Safety: Advancing IT” an event held December 3, 2014 to discuss ideas and topics related to the solutions and technology needed to better protect patients. An expert in the field, Tejal Gandhi, MD, President of the National Patient Safety Foundation www.npsf.org presented her ideas on the changing landscape and the lessons learned in terms of patient safety.
According to Dr. Gandhi, “There are several emerging areas affecting healthcare and the safety of patients. The fact is that more and more care is not provided in hospitals but in the home or at an urgent care facility. This often means that these settings do not have the type of quality and safety infrastructure that exists in hospitals, nor do they have the robust mechanism to identify errors, measure errors, or receive information on adverse events.”
She also reports, “Systems are needed so that clinicians can communicate and learn from each other which requires information to be transferred between organizations in order to make accurate medical decisions to avoid medical errors.”
She added, “When patients leave the hospital and are transitioned to other care facilities, this can prove to be a high risk time when key information can fall through the cracks. To improve patient safety, there needs to be a seamless flow of information via EMRs.”
Also, “EMRs are extremely valuable when doctors are diagnosing a patient’s medical condition. However, sometimes diagnostic decisions are not correct simply because there is no standard reporting mechanism and there may not be enough details in the medical record whether on paper or available through technology.”
Dr. Gandhi feels strongly that transparency of information must go not only between doctors and patients but between healthcare institutions. The use of technology needs to enable hospitals to become more transparent so that information can flow across hospitals and organizations. If this occurs, better solutions can be shared not only between hospitals but also between patients.