This lecture discusses how health information technology (HIT) can impact quality improvement and patient safety. Well-implemented HIT has the potential to enhance safety, effectiveness, equity and other dimensions of care. However, unintended consequences can also lower quality if HIT solutions are not developed carefully. Workarounds created to adjust to new HIT systems may undermine safety if they circumvent important checks. Overall implementation of HIT requires attention to workflow, usability and avoidance of workarounds to fully realize benefits to patient care.
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HIT's Impact on Quality and Safety
1. Quality Improvement
Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
Lecture d
This material (Comp 12 Unit 1) was developed by Johns Hopkins University, funded by the Department of Health
and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award
Number IU24OC000013. This material was updated in 2016 by Johns Hopkins University under Award
Number 90WT0005.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
2. Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
Learning Objective — Lecture d
• Analyze the ways that HIT can either help
or hinder quality and patient safety.
2
3. Enhancing Equity with HIT
Data capture
• Can monitor by population
characteristics.
• Can uncover health care
disparities.
Tailor to patient needs
• Can enable competency-
based patient education.
• Can tailor information to
educational background and
development status.
Multi-modal functionality
• Can provide various ways
for patients to get health
information.
• Can decrease health care
disparity.
Decision support
• Can provide drug cost
information.
• Can assist providers in
selecting alternatives for
low-income patients.
3
4. Equity: Case Review
Event:
• One of the greatest challenges to chronic care
management in a public housing community is
keeping patients engaged in their care.
• They are often lost to follow-up care when they
do not return for medical visits or refill their
prescriptions.
• This is especially problematic for vulnerable
patients with diabetes.
4
5. What They Did: Self-Management
Counseling
System change:
• Community volunteers were provided online training
on self-management counseling for patients with
diabetes.
• They created a diabetes registry in the electronic
health record to identify and recall patients due for
routine diabetes care.
• Just prior to the scheduled visit, the community
volunteer reminds the patient of the visit and asks
him to arrive early for self-management teaching.
5
6. HIT and Optimizing Equity
• There are few stroke specialists in rural
areas, so people at risk for stroke in these
areas have unequal access to quality care.
• Physicians in Arizona set up a hub-and-
spoke service using telemedicine (audio-
video) to decrease health disparities.
(hub=urban stroke center; spoke=outlying
rural hospitals)
6
7. Systematic Reviews of Health IT’s
Impact on Quality and Safety
Source: Banger, A., & Graber, M. (2015 February). Recent evidence that health IT improves patient safety (Issue Brief).
Retrieved March 28, 2016, from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator
Web site: https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/brief_1_final_feb11t.pdf
7
8. Workarounds
• Defined
– Alternative processes
that help workers avoid
demands placed on
them that they perceive
to be unrealistic or
harmful.
– Unanticipated behaviors
directly or indirectly
caused by the EHR
when the system
impedes one’s work.
• Examples
– Nurses taking verbal
orders rather than
prescribers entering the
order into CPOE due to
workflow timing of event.
– Significant events
located in multiple
locations in the EHR due
to lack of standardization
of data entry screens.
8
9. Artifacts
• Defined
– Manmade tools
that aid or enhance
the worker’s
thinking abilities.
– Developed to meet
the demands of an
activity.
• Examples
– Bedside references.
– Patient locator
boards.
– Report sheets.
– Documenting on
paper then
transcribing into
electronic record.
9
10. HIT and Workarounds — 1
• Dr. Foxwood creates a new order each
time he wants to re-order a medication.
• The nurse enters a verbal order to
discontinue the previous medication order,
so that the medication will be removed
from the electronic medication record.
• Dr. Foxwood fails to co-sign the
discontinuation order because he sees this
as an administrative task.
10
11. HIT and Workarounds — 2
• When a barcoding medication system interfered with their
workflow, nurses devised workarounds, such as removing
the armband from the patient and attaching it to the bed
because the barcode reader failed to interpret bar codes
when the bracelet curved tightly around a small arm.
Image courtesy U.S. Navy, Photo by Petty
Officer 1st Class Brian A. Goyak. 11
12. HIT and Workarounds — 3
• Investigators found increased mortality among children admitted
to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh after CPOE implementation.
• Three reasons were cited for this unexpected outcome:
1. CPOE changed the workflow.
2. Order entry required as many as 10 clicks and took as long as two
minutes.
3. When the team changed its workflow to accommodate CPOE, face-
to-face contact among team members diminished.
12
14. Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
Summary — Lecture d
• Well-crafted HIT solutions can:
– Improve safety, effectiveness, efficiency, equity,
timeliness, and patient-centeredness of care.
– Work to accomplish the best care for the whole
population at the lowest cost.
• Unintended consequences of HIT:
– Can lower quality and result in unsafe care.
– Can be minimized through best practices and
avoidance of workarounds.
– Need to be studied further.
14
15. Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
References — Lecture d — 1
References
Banger, A., & Graber, M. (2015 February). Recent evidence that health IT improves
patient safety (Issue Brief). Retrieved March 28, 2016, from the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator Web site:
https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/brief_1_final_feb11t.pdf
Doyle, M. (2005). Impact of the Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA) system on
medication administration errors. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of
Arizona, Tucson, in Nursing Informatics and the Foundation of Knowledge. Sudbury,
MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Han, Y.Y., Carcillo, J.A., Venkataraman, S.T., et al. (2005). Unexpected increased
mortality after implementation of a commercially sold computerized physician order
entry system. Pediatrics. 116;1506 – 1512.
Images
Slide 7: Systematic reviews of health IT’s impact on quality and safety. Banger, A., &
Graber, M. (2015 February). Recent evidence that health IT improves patient safety
(Issue Brief). Retrieved March 28, 2016, from the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator Web site:
https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/brief_1_final_feb11t.pdf
15
16. Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
References — Lecture d — 2
Images
Slide 11: Patient armbands. Department of Defense. Retrieved March 24, 2016, from:
http://archive.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/homepagephoto/2011-05/hires_110502-N-
QD416-033d.jpg
Slide 13: SAFER guides. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the
National Coordinator. Retrieved March 24, 2016, from: https://www.healthit.gov/safer/
16
17. Quality Improvement
Introduction to Quality Improvement
and Health Information Technology
Lecture d
This material (Comp 12 Unit 1) was developed by
Johns Hopkins University, funded by the
Department of Health and Human Services, Office
of the National Coordinator for Health Information
Technology under Award Number IU24OC000013.
This material was updated in 2016 by Johns
Hopkins University under Award Number
90WT0005.
17
Editor's Notes
Welcome to Quality Improvement: Introduction to Quality Improvement and Health Information Technology. This is Lecture d.
The Objective for Introduction to Quality Improvement and Health Information Technology is to:
Analyze the ways that HIT can either help or hinder quality and patient safety.
HIT can enhance equity of health care and services. Data capture can allow for monitoring by population characteristics to uncover health care disparities. The multi-modal functionality of systems can allow for various ways for patients to get health information to decrease health care disparities. Competency-based patient education can tailor information to the patient’s educational background and developmental status. Decision support can offer drug cost information to assist providers in selecting alternatives for low-income patients.
Over the past two to three decades, there has been a remarkable increase in the aging and diversity of our population. Many people in the U.S. come from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa; these people make up one-third of the U.S. population. This proportion is expected to increase to half by 2050. Health care disparity, or unequal access to quality care, is a major concern. For example, particularly in low-income public housing developments, the effort to both engage and retain that engagement is a huge challenge. Chronic care management is difficult when so many are lost to follow-up (meaning that they do not return for follow-up care or regular checkups) or when they do not either fill their prescriptions – or – do not take their medications. This is especially problematic for vulnerable patients with diabetes. Often times, the decision comes down to, “do I pay for my prescriptions or do I buy food? I cannot afford to do both.”
Consider how you would address this issue.
As a result of this event, community volunteers were provided online training on self-management counseling for patients with diabetes. They created a diabetes registry in the electronic health record to identify and recall patients due for routine diabetes care. Just prior to the scheduled visit, the community volunteer reminds the patient of the visit and asks him to arrive early for self-management teaching.
There are few stroke specialists in rural areas, so people at risk for stroke in these areas have unequal access to quality care. Physicians in Arizona set up a ‘hub’ (urban stroke center) and ‘spoke’ (outlying rural hospitals) service using telemedicine (audio-video) to decrease health disparities. There is actually a growing demand for the use of non-physician providers to supplement care in areas where there is no doctor as well. Nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and other types of care providers are being successfully used to provide a bridge for those on the far side of the care divide.
In a February 2015 Issue Brief prepared for DHHS Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), key takeaway points included the following:
“Health information technology (health IT) has been adopted widely in U.S. health care systems with expectations of lowering cost and improved quality and patient safety. While we see many examples, as discussed already, has this concept been studied in more systematic fashion? Four separate but linked systematic reviews examining this concern have been published over the last decade. These analyses have revealed the following:
“Health IT is working. With each review, the evidence base is expanding, with articles that describe net benefit in a wide range of settings and applications.
“The number of health care organizations perceived as leaders in advancing health IT is growing.
“Research should now turn to understanding the relatively small but important number of unintended consequences that detract from the overall impact of this new technology and the variability in the success of health IT implementations, especially in areas that impact patient safety.”
Workarounds are alternative processes that help workers avoid demands placed on them that they perceive to be unrealistic or harmful. These unanticipated behaviors can be directly or indirectly caused by the EHR when the system impedes the provider’s work. For example, a nurse may take a verbal order rather than the prescriber entering the order into CPOE due to workflow timing of the event, such as the surgeon being scrubbed on a case in the OR. Another example is the case where significant events are located in multiple locations in the electronic record due to lack of standardization of data-entry screens.
Artifacts are man-made tools that help the worker to think. They are developed to meet the demands of a particular activity. Examples include:
Keeping references at the bedside so that the nurse can refer to them during the course of care
Patient locator boards that list names of patients and room assignments so that unit personnel can track where patients are housed
Report sheets that list important patient information for hand-off purposes
Even documenting on paper then transcribing into the electronic record is an aid for the provider to remember data that he or she wants to enter into the electronic record at a later time.
So let’s talk about workarounds. You will find that health care providers are expert at creating workarounds when technology does not fit into their clinical workflow.
Here’s an example. Dr. Foxwood creates a new order each time he wants to re-order a medication. The nurse enters a verbal order to discontinue the previous medication order, so that the previous medication will be removed from the electronic medical record. Dr. Foxwood fails to co-sign the discontinuation order because he sees this as an administrative task.
Other examples include:
Drug orders written in a free-text message screen, causing delay or omission of medications because they are not seen by the pharmacist.
Data entered into multiple information systems due to lack of interfaces, resulting in transcription error.
Entering admission and discharges into the system in order to create lab test requisitions.
Frequent reviews of the electronic health record every 15 minutes to detect new orders.
Can you think of workarounds that you have seen in your current job? Why were these created?
This and the following two slides talk about workarounds caused by poor HIT design. Doyle reported that when a barcoding medication system interfered with their workflow, nurses devised workarounds, such as removing the armband from the patient and attaching it to the bed because the barcode reader failed to interpret barcodes when the bracelet curved tightly around a small arm.
Han and colleagues reported increased deaths in children admitted to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh after CPOE implementation. Three reasons were cited for this unexpected outcome. First, CPOE changed the workflow in the emergency room. Before CPOE, orders were written for critical and time-sensitive treatment based on radio communication with the incoming transport team before the child arrived. After CPOE implementation, orders could not be written until the patient arrived and was registered in the system (a policy that was later changed). Second, entering an order required as many as ten clicks and took as long as two minutes; moreover, computer screens sometimes froze or response time was slow. Finally, when the team changed its workflow to accommodate CPOE, face-to-face contact among team members diminished. Despite the problems with study methods identified by some of the informatics community, there certainly were serious human-technology-interface problems.
The ONC has compiled a set of resources to help organizations with EHR safety. Together, these resources are called the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience — or the SAFER Guides. The guides have been collected into three groups: Foundational, Infrastructure, and Clinical Process Guides. They are meant to be used by organizations as a means of self-assessment in regard to the recommended practices for EHR safety. Interactive PDF versions of the guides are available for download at the HealthIT.gov website.
This concludes Quality Improvement: Introduction to Quality Improvement and Health Information Technology. In summary, when well designed and used as intended, HIT can improve all of the aims of quality and can work to accomplish the best care for the whole population at the lowest cost. When designed poorly and subject to workarounds, HIT can result in unintended adverse consequences. HIT best practices similar to the ONC SAFER guidelines can minimize these risks. HIT safety issues should be studied and improved upon further.