“Safety Huddles” Recommended To Promote Electronic Health Record Safety

“Safety huddles” attended by hospital medical teams were shown to be an effective strategy for identifying safety concerns related to electronic health records (EHRs), according to an AHRQ study. About 250 huddles attended over a one-year period by administrative, clinical and information technology staff at a midsized tertiary-care hospital identified 245 EHR-related safety concerns. Most concerns involved "EHR technology working incorrectly" (42 percent), followed by "EHR technology not working at all" (26 percent), "EHR technology missing or absent" (17 percent) and "user errors" (16 percent). The study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association recommended safety huddles for improving EHR safety improvement. Access the abstract.

2016 Dec 28. pii: ocw153. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocw153. [Epub ahead of print]

Safety huddles to proactively identify and address electronic health record safety.

Menon S1, Singh H1, Giardina TD1, Rayburn WL1, Davis BP1,1, Russo EM1, Sittig DF2.

Author information

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Methods to identify and study safety risks of electronic health records (EHRs) are underdeveloped and largely depend on limited end-user reports. "Safety huddles" have been found useful in creating a sense of collective situational awareness that increases an organization's capacity to respond to safety concerns. We explored the use of safety huddles for identifying and learning about EHR-related safety concerns.

DESIGN:

Data were obtained from daily safety huddle briefing notes recorded at a single midsized tertiary-care hospital in the United States over 1 year. Huddles were attended by key administrative, clinical, and information technology staff. We conducted a content analysis of huddle notes to identify what EHR-related safety concerns were discussed. We expanded a previously developed EHR-related error taxonomy to categorize types of EHR-related safety concerns recorded in the notes.

RESULTS:

On review of daily huddle notes spanning 249 days, we identified 245 EHR-related safety concerns. For our analysis, we defined EHR technology to include a specific EHR functionality, an entire clinical software application, or the hardware system. Most concerns (41.6%) involved "EHR technology working incorrectly," followed by 25.7% involving "EHR technology not working at all." Concerns related to "EHR technology missing or absent" accounted for 16.7%, whereas 15.9% were linked to "user errors" CONCLUSIONS: Safety huddles promoted discussion of several technology-related issues at the organization level and can serve as a promising technique to identify and address EHR-related safety concerns. Based on our findings, we recommend that health care organizations consider huddles as a strategy to promote understanding and improvement of EHR safety.