Patient Safety and Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
EHRs Support Safer, Higher Quality Health Care
As early as 2001, the Institute of Medicine stated that to support safer, higher quality health care, systems of care needed to be redesigned including the use of information technology to support clinical and administrative processes.
Adverse events, or injuries caused by medical management, are the result of errors of commission (errors in dose, surgical error, etc.) and omission (avoidable delay in diagnosis, failure to act on test results, etc.). Patient data safety systems should incorporate immediate access to patient information and decision support tools while also capturing adverse events and near misses to enable the design of safer care delivery systems.
The current healthcare information infrastructure is error prone and studies demonstrate that electronic health record (EHR) users make more appropriate clinical decisions.
This slide presentation includes key capabilities of an EHR system and recommendations of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety. Click "Download Whitepaper" to request the URL to this resource.
