Question

1. Your organization has the following goal regarding clinician communication: Improve patient safety by ensuring clinician-to-clinician messages are not lost in the system. Which of the SAFER Analysis Recommended Practices are related to the strategic goal and according to the analysis results, is the EHR currently meeting the goal?

2. Based on the Potentially Useful Practices provided in the SAFER worksheets, make appropriate recommendations for change to better meet that objective.

Answer 1

US healthcare delivery is in the midst of a profound transformation which results, at least in part, from Federal public policy efforts to encourage the adoption and use of health information technology (health IT). For example, HITECH regulations within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act incentivize health IT use, and are changing the practice of medicine and clinical care delivery in both beneficial and untoward ways. Increased adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems has been accompanied by heightened recognition of issues related to ‘goodness of fit’ in the user-friendliness of EHR systems. Some EHR users lament that health IT seems designed more for clinical transactions than for clinical care, and may not be easy to use in some care settings.In addition, many EHR systems require extensive training and lack standard user interfaces so that clinicians who work in multiple care settings using disparate technologies may struggle with the differences in interface design, with adverse impact on patient safety. User interface design can influence provider productivity: well-designed interfaces speed work, while poorly designed interfaces steal minutes from busy schedules. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care identified means by which health IT can lead to safer care, as well as introduce new safety risks. A critical component of safe and effective use of health IT is usability—‘the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which the intended users can achieve their tasks in the intended context of product use.