INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND PATIENT SAFETY

Information Systems and Patient Safety

Information Systems and Patient Safety

Keywords

Information Systems, Patient Safety

Introduction

Information Systems

Law enforcement has always been a dataintensive industry. Investigating criminal activity, implementing problem-oriented policing, processing court cases, and managing correctional facilities are all heavily dependent on information for their successful operation (O'Brien, 2003). Until recently, however, implementing integrated information systems to better manage available data has typically been beyond the technical and fiscal reach of most organizations within the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, the technical and fiscal constraints experienced by the criminal justice system are similar for many other organizations in the public sector.

In the early twenty-first century, however, the technical, fiscal, and management barriers to implementing integrated information systems are falling dramatically. Both hardware and application software are becoming less expensive and easier to manage, and they provide greater performance. Equally important, de facto standards have emerged over the last decade that have significantly reduced the fiscal and technical management costs of data communications (e.g., TCP/IP, HTML), operating systems (e.g., UNIX, Windows) and applications software (U.S. Department of Commerce 2000). All these factors are converging to offer new opportunities for systems development and integration for public sector organizations. In addition to technological change, however, the structure and geographic organization of criminal justice have had profound effects on the development of information systems.

Patient Safety

Patient safety is defined by the Institute of Medicine as freedom from injury associated with accidents or medical errors that can occur across the life span. Joshua A. Perper wrote in 1994 that the most vulnerable patients, who are likely to experience the most frequent and severe injuries, include (a) elderly in poor health; (b) persons with chronic disabling conditions or disabilities, and (c) persons hospitalized for long periods of time. Often, a frail elderly patient “fits” into each of these three high-risk categories, increasing risk exponentially (Perper, 1994). The purpose of this entry is to elucidate the challenge of promoting patient safety for vulnerable elderly populations, depicting unique hazard conditions, and suggesting safety defenses to prevent adverse outcomes.

Analyses

Patient safety emerged as a national health care priority in 2000, when the Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human, was published. Prior to this, errors and adverse events were common but fairly invisible to the public. The Institute of Medicine emphasized that patient safety was a serious problem crossing all health care facilities and that medical errors occurred even in good hospitals with conscientious care providers. A key finding was that medical errors or adverse events were not the fault of individual practitioners but rather a result of the process of health care. The goal of patient safety involves the redesign of patient care processes to make them more resistant to error occurrence (error reduction) and more accommodating to its consequences (error containment), as noted by Patrice L. Splath in 2000.

Although not all medical errors cause injuries, accidental injuries are common in elderly and can be associated with medical errors. The Institute of Medicine states that a medical error is the ...