HHS releases SAFER guides for HIT
Furthering its Health IT Safety Plan, the Department of Health & Human Services has released a new set of guides and interactive tools to help healthcare providers more safely use electronic health IT products.
The Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides are a suite of tools, including checklists and recommended practices designed to help healthcare providers and the organizations that support them assess and optimize the safety and safe use of EHRs, according to an announcement from the organization.
The HHS Health IT Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan was issued in July 2013 and the SAFER guides are designed to complement existing health IT safety tools and research developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). AHRQ’s Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) have explicitly identified health IT as a high priority area because of the enormous impact EHRs are having on patient safety right now. PSOs are charged to help their members improve patient safety, and the SAFER Guides give them an evidence-based tool to do so.
Rigorously developed by leading health IT safety and informatics researchers and based on the latest available evidence, expert opinion, stakeholder engagement and field work, each SAFER Guide addresses a critical area associated with the safe use of EHRs through a series of self-assessment checklists, practice worksheets and recommended practices.
"After a lot of hard work, we have combined evidence-based guidelines with practical advice to help you use your health information technology more safely," said Jacob Reider, MD, director of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, in a post on ONC's blog, Health IT Buzz. "We hope every sector of the healthcare industry will consider how they can make the SAFER guides their own, including tailoring the content to their particular setting, specialty and priorities."
Areas addressed include:
- High priority practices
- Organizational responsibilities
- Patient identification
- Computerized physician order entry with decision support
- Test results review and follow-up
- Clinician communication
- Contingency planning
- System interfaces
- System configuration
The SAFER guides are available at http://www.HealthIT.gov/saferguide.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.