ECRI offers risk management strategies for HIT

ECRI Institute, an independent, nonprofit organization that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, has released an article, “Risk Managers’ 10 Strategies for Health IT Success,”  and will provide free access the week of June 17-21, which is also Healthcare Risk Management Week.

Based on the organization's research and interviews with risk managers and health IT safety experts, the article identifies the top 10 strategies to guide a risk management approach to health IT.

“Health IT is on nearly every healthcare organization’s radar screen. And it will continue to be for the next few years as organizations move to electronic health records,” said Cindy Wallace, senior risk management analyst. “We recognize that bringing these systems online is a massive team effort. Risk management input is essential.”

“Risk management principles should be applied to all stages of the health IT project and should not be considered only at the end when there’s a problem,” said Karen P. Zimmer, MD, MPH, FAAP, medical director, ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization (PSO).

Some of the strategies suggested in the report include the following:

1. Be involved from the start;
2. Adopt an enterprise-wide perspective;
3. Get to know the IT department;
4. Tout your problem-solving skills; and
5. Pay attention to known high-risk areas.

Along with the top 10 health IT success strategies, ECRI Institute has developed a toolkit, which was published with the results from ECRI Institute PSO’s Deep Dive analysis of health IT events. It “can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses in the organization’s risk management approach to health IT and to focus on those areas requiring attention,” said Zimmer.