The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, an innovative and collaborative multi-stakeholder effort, took important steps in improving health IT safety at its first in-person meeting held in September at ECRI Institute’s U.S. headquarters outside Philadelphia. Proceedings from this event are now available for free public access at www.ecri.org/HIT. The Partnering for Success meeting provided a forum for addressing health IT safety and innovation as a shared responsibility among stakeholders including: providers, health IT vendors, associations, patient safety organizations and researchers.
An initial outcome from the meeting was the formation of workgroups to study why specific safety problems are occurring and identify best practices for preventing recurrence. The first workgroup is focusing on the unsafe aspects of copy-paste in the electronic health record. This workgroup, chaired by Tejal Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, president and chief executive officer of the National Patient Safety Foundation, comprises 20 individuals representing all of the different stakeholders participating in the partnership. The workgroup will be meeting through the summer of 2015 and releasing recommendations and best practices.
This and other workgroups will study why reported events are occurring and identify best practices for preventing recurrence.
