Technology and Patient Safety

Making Technology Safer 

TMA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Health Information Technology (HIT) has identified patient-safety related events caused by technology as an important initiative for TMA. The importance of this issue is heightened now that EHRs are universally installed across the U.S. health care system.

In 2017, TMA joined the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety (Partnership), a multi-stakeholder collaborative whose goal is to make health information technology safer together. The Partnership’s activities include analyzing health IT-related safety hazards and events and using what is learned to develop safer products and practices. In November 2020, ECRI announced that the Partnership will discontinue its efforts after Dec. 31, 2020.

This page is dedicated to providing resources and education designed to improve the safe and effective use of technology for better health outcomes.

Articles

• Improve Patient Safety by Focusing on Safe Practices for Drug Allergies (Texas Medicine Today, Sept. 10, 2019)

• Keep Your EHR SAFER With These Guides (Texas Medicine Today, Mar. 13, 2018)

  EHR Customization Can Threaten Patient Safety (Texas Medicine Today, Mar. 20, 2018)

• 2018 Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations (ECRI Institute) 

• EHR Copy and Paste and Patient Safety (AHRQ)

Optimize the Safety of Your EHR

The SAFER Guides are designed to help healthcare organizations conduct self-assessments to optimize the safety and safe use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the following areas:

• High Priority Practices
• Organizational Responsibilities
• Contingency Planning
• System Configuration
• System Interfaces
• Patient Identification
• Computerized Provider Order Entry with Decision Support
• Test Results Reporting and Follow-Up
• Clinician Communication

The recommended practices in the SAFER Guides are intended to be useful for all EHR users, developers, patient safety organizations, and others who are concerned with optimizing the safe use of health IT.

Additional Resources

Use the resources listed below to learn how to reduce the risk of patient safety events related to health information technology.  

Podcasts

Listen to the three-part podcast series developed by workgroup leaders of The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety. Workgroups established by the Partnership for in-depth study of health IT events have developed safe practice recommendations.

• Part 1: Diagnostic Error and the Importance of Closing the Loop
• Part 2: Closing the Loop through Technology and Collaboration
• Part 3: Closing the Loop Learning from the Data

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• Manuals
• Safe Practices for Drug Allergies — Using CDS and Health IT
  (Partnership for Health IT and Patient Safety)
  Find out how how can technology be implemented and used to facilitate the safer exchange of information about drug allergy interactions.
• Guide to Reducing Unintended Consequences of Electronic Health Records  
  (ONC and AHRQ)
  An online resource designed to help you and your organization anticipate, avoid, and address problems that can occur when implementing and using an electronic health record (EHR).
• Health Information Technology Patient Safety Action & Surveillance Plan (ONC)
  This Health IT Safety Plan has two fundamental objectives: first, to promote the health care industry’s use of health IT to make care safer, and second, to continuously improve the safety of health IT itself.
• Quality Improvement, Patient Safety & Efficiency in Outpatient Practice* (ASHRM)
  *View the manual under their Tools/Resources section. The purpose of this manual is to provide guidance in quality improvement, risk management and patient safety, and is a teaching guide for outpatient and ambulatory care settings.

Interactive Tools

• Safe Practice Recommendations for Developing, Implementing, and Integrating a Health IT Safety Program (ECRI Institute)

  Health IT Safe Practices (ECRI Institute)
  Recommendations and implementation toolkits to make health IT safer

• Health IT Issues Log—Conducting Risk Analysis and Documenting Findings
  (ECRI Institute)
  The Health IT Issues Log is used to gather information about EHR-related issues, hazards, concerns, and unintended consequences. The log helps document and track health IT issues, hazards, and events. Additionally, it provides a means to capture how the issue was identified, assessed, and reviewed. It helps identify what is needed to develop, deploy, and remediate the issue, hazard, or concern. Keeping this information in a central place allows users to track and communicate the action plan and to monitor successes or the need for additional activities.

Security

Protect your practice from health information leaks or breaches, and know what to do if they occur.

Are You Prepared for a Computer Virus Incident? (E-Tips, Nov. 12, 2015) 

Eight Steps to a HIPAA Security Risk Analysis (E-Tips, Feb. 11, 2013)

Security Risk Assessment Tool (HealthIT.gov)

Online encryption guide launched by AMA