Health care quality management by means of an incident report system and an electronic patient record system.
BACKGROUND
Quality management in health care services has not been as successful as in other industries.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the potential contribution of an on-line incident reporting system (OIRS) and of an electronic patient record (EPR) system to quality management in hospitals.


METHODS
The two approaches are being implemented in Osaka University Hospital.


RESULTS
Analysis of the early use of the on-line reporting system indicates that this qualitative approach has been effective to avoid adverse medical events. The quantitative methodology with the EPR is still in the phase of developing.


CONCLUSIONS
Direct data entry by medical staff and an EPR based on dynamic templates and a dynamic problem oriented approach could be useful for building clinical data repositories that can support clinical quality management.
Takeda
Hiroshi
H
Department of Medical Information Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, 2-2, Yamada-oka, Suita 565-0871, Japan. takeda@hp-info.med.osaka-u.ac.jp
Matsumura
Yasushi
Y
Nakajima
Kazue
K
Kuwata
Shigenori
S
Zhenjun
Yang
Y
Shanmai
Ji
J
Qiyan
Zhang
Z
Yufen
Chen
C
Kusuoka
Hideo
H
Inoue
Michitoshi
M
D006801:Humans; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D009862:Online Systems; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012308:Risk Management; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface