The transformational power of IT: Experience from patient safety leaders.
Late last year, David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph.D., National Health Information Technology Coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services, visited Evanston (IL) Northwestern Hospital (ENH) to observe its electronic medical record system. ENH is the first in the nation to put such a system into an acute care setting, including all three of its hospitals and its 70 medical offices and ambulatory sites. "It's been truly transformational for our processes, our delivery of care, our communications, and our way of doing business," says Mark R. Neaman, FACHE, ENH's president and chief executive officer. What's more, ENH has demonstrated at least a 20 percent reduction in medication errors, and the remaining errors have shifted from wrong medication and wrong patient to errors of timing, which are almost always less severe.
May
Ellen Lanser
EL
D002201:Capital Expenditures; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006787:Hospitals, Veterans; D006801:Humans; D007087:Illinois; D007449:Investments; D008281:Maine; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D009820:Ohio; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D009936:Organizational Innovation; D016730:Program Development; D018511:Systems Integration; D014481:United States