ONC releases health IT safety guide

To help EHR users navigate health IT-related safety issues, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) officials posted on the agency blog a guide and slide deck, developed by ECRI Institute.

The guide is geared toward healthcare and patient safety organizations, as well as health IT technology developers, industry professional associations and risk management/liability insurance companies, with the aim of improving reporting of unsafe conditions related with EHRs and health IT in general. It’s one of several tools developed to address potential unintended consequences of health IT as part of its Health IT Patient Safety Action and Surveillance Plan, according to the blog post authored by ONC staff Kathy Kenyon, JD, senior policy analyst, and Steven Posnack, director, federal policy division.

The guide discusses two standardized reporting tools that should help describe the role of health IT in adverse events and unsafe conditions, specifically AHRQ’s Common Formats (version 1.2) and AHRQ’s Hazard Manager. These tools allow aggregation and comparison of health IT-related events and unsafe conditions over time. Also, the guide addresses the need for follow-up reports on health IT safety events.

“We hope the guide published today will help stakeholders identify unsafe conditions with underlying health IT causes so they are more frequently reported,” wrote the authors.