The Institute of Medicine (IOM) announced it will conduct a year-long study for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to identify best policies and practices for improving healthcare safety when using electronic health records.
The IOM, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, will examine prevention of health IT-related errors, rapid reporting of patient safety concerns and methods to promote safety-enhancing features of electronic health records (EHRs), said Dr. David Blumenthal, the national health IT coordinator.
The IOM will also make recommendations about the potential effects of government policies and private sector efforts to make the most of patient safety and avoid medical errors through health IT.
The IOM has been a leader in the movement to improve patient safety since its ground-breaking 1999 study, "To Err is Human," about the prevalence of patient errors, was published.
"This study will draw on IOM's depth of knowledge in this area to help all of us ensure that HIT reaches the goals we are seeking for patient safety improvement," Blumenthal said.
Earlier this year, the Health IT Policy Committee, a federal advisory group, conducted hearings about patient safety and EHRs. It recommended creating a national database to which healthcare providers can report patient data errors and unsafe conditions they encounter using EHRs.
The committee also urged the establishment of a patient safety organization to analyze the reports and share information from the database to make healthcare a learning system.
