The iHealth Alliance, a non-profit healthcare industry group announced the launch of an online service to report events that involve the patient safety risks associated with using electronic health records.
EHRevent.org, a cooperative effort of industry and federal agencies, is a Web-based reporting system through which physicians and other healthcare providers can describe on a confidential basis patient safety risks and concerns involving the deployment of EHRs.
EHRevent is modeled on the national reporting system used by the Federal Aviation Administration and the aviation industry to report safety problems. Its reports include safety threats related to software problems, inadequate user training, security breaches and near-misses, according to Dr. Nancy Dickey, iHealth Alliance chair and former president of the American Medical Association.
The EHR reporting system is a collaboration of the iHealth Alliance, the Health and Human Services Department and PDR Network, a distributor of product safety alerts. Its goal is to improve EHR and patient safety and reduce professional liability.
The system is necessary because providers will be broadly adopting EHRs as part of the meaningful use incentive program, Dickey said at a briefing announcing EHRevent.org Nov. 15.
"As with any new system, there is a learning curve for the software providers and for the doctors who use these systems. EHRevent will help us all get smarter about EHRs and assure that patient care advances are also patient-safe advances," she said.
Although EHRs can improve the quality of care and reduce its costs, it is critical that introduction of these technologies is as safe and as easy as possible, said Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator. He welcomed the creation of the EHRevent.org service, saying, "This new private sector, voluntary reporting system is one of the important pieces of the puzzle to making sure that that happens."
"Improving safety begins with understanding where the threats to safety are occurring, and this is one way of getting that information in a prompt and actionable form," he said at a briefing announcing the reporting system.
Reports will be confidential but medical societies, insurance companies and government agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, will use the information to help educate providers on the potential challenges of adopting EHR systems and improving patient safety.
FDA also has experience with reporting adverse events and educating the public about safety threats associated with the release of new medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said FDA will help to encourage physicians and EHR vendors to report information on their experiences with electronic health records to EHRevent and other appropriate reporting systems.
EHRevent is also working directly with EHR vendors as well as regional health IT extension centers (RECs), which the ONC has funded to assist physicians with EHR selection and adoption. Participating EHR vendors and RECs will help educate physicians regarding the importance of EHR event reporting and will receive reports as EHRevent partners, Dickey said.
EHRevent and a similar service for reporting adverse drug events via EHRs will be governed by the iHealth Alliance, with network operations provided by PDR Network.
The reporting services will collect information using online forms based on the Common Format developed by the Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality (AHRQ). The reports will be kept confidential through PDR Secure, a patient safety organization that will allow only participating organizations to access the reports.
Patient safety organizations can be certified through AHRQ and provide a legal framework for healthcare providers to voluntarily and
confidentially report safety information.
The organizations offer a shared-learning approach that supports effective interventions to reduce risk of harm to patients and
improve quality, said Dr. William Munier, Director for AHRQ's Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
"We know that clinicians and health care organizations want to participate in efforts to improve patient care," he said.
EHRevent will also be available via the Web sites of participating liability carriers, medical societies, PDR Network and other partners, including EHR system vendors.
