ECRI's Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety issues safe practice recommendations for patient ID
The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, an ECRI Institute collaborative, announced at HIMSS17 its second set of Safe Practice Recommendations aimed at reducing patient misidentification.
The evidence-based recommendations for the use of health IT in patient identification are designed to improve health IT safety and build upon other work in patient identification, the collaborative said.
In the publicly available toolkit, “Health IT Safe Practices: Toolkit for the Safe Use of Health IT for Patient Identification,” the Partnership presents eight safe practice recommendations, along with actionable resources to facilitate the implementation of these recommended safe practices.
The patient identification workgroup, chaired by Hardeep Singh, MD, from the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Baylor College of Medicine, included nearly 40 leaders from various participating collaborating organizations and provider facilities.
“Patient identification is a complex topic and our recommendations were derived using a three-pronged approach - that of catching, matching and display,” explained Singh. These elements must be include in any focus for improving patient identification methods, along with facilitation of accurate information matching and display of information to enhance patient identification.
Following extensive review and discussion of the information, the group identified the following Safe Practice Recommendations. The resulting mnemonic encourages stakeholders to IDENTIFY:
INCLUDE: Electronic fields containing patient identification data should consistently use standard identifier conventions.
DETECT: Use a confirmation process to help match the patient and the documentation.
EVALUATE: Use standard attributes and attribute formats in all transactions to improve matching.
NORMALIZE: Use a standard display of patient attributes across the various systems.
TAILOR: Include distinguishing information enhancing identification on screens printouts, and those areas that require interventions.
INNOVATE: Integrate new technologies to facilitate and enhance identification.
FOLLOW-UP: Implement monitoring systems to readily detect identification errors.
YIELD: Include high-specificity active alerts and notifications to facilitate proper identification.
“I hope the toolkit will stimulate discussions about safe practices for the use of technology in patient identification, help facilitate implementation of the safe practices and build a foundation for additional work in this area,” said ECRI Institute Program Director Lorraine Possanza.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
