Despite the potential technology holds in optimizing patient care, the downsides may lead to poor outcomes unless hospitals can work out the kinks with implementation and use.
The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory published a report analyzing HIT's effects on patients based on data analyzed between January 2010 and June 2013. The researchers assessed 889 hospitals in the state in the report.
Here are five takeaways:
1. Researchers linked 33 percent of HIT sentinel events to human-computer interface. Twenty-four were due to workflow and communication issues and 23 percent of errors attributed to clinical content.
2. Researchers found HIT-related errors occurred during every step of the medication-use process.
3. Of these errors, 69.2 percent resulted reached the patient.
4. A fraction of the errors (0.9 percent) caused patient harm.
5. The three most commonly reported events include dose omission, wrong dose/over dose and extra dose.