Accreditation requirements could compel adoption of best practices to reduce harm
Hospitals—like organizations in many industries—benefit from the adoption of best practices that help improve the quality and safety of the services they offer. However, in many cases, health care facilities fail to use established best practices because of competing priorities, regulatory demands, and other factors. To encourage adoption of practices known to improve care quality and safety, the federal government and organizations that accredit hospitals, such as The Joint Commission, can set safety-related standards that hospitals must meet.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the role that health IT can play in keeping both patients and providers safe. Clinical decision support tools built into EHRs can include COVID-related triage questions, such as whether an individual is experiencing symptoms or has been around others who may have been infected. These kinds of tools can help providers to quarantine patients who may be infected and begin providing appropriate care as quickly as possible—but only if clinicians can use them effectively.
Many of the medical errors stemming from EHRs result from subpar usability, which refers to how doctors, nurses, and other clinicians interact with the system. One study found that approximately one-third of 9,000 health IT-related medication safety events occurred at least in part due to errors related to the usability of these systems.
