Research and Projects: AHRQ THQIT and SRD Portfolio

Wisconsin

Improving Patient Safety/Quality with HIT Implementation

Description:  Implements an Epic health IT system and diffuses the system community-wide; identifies the prevalence of medication errors, near misses, and preventable adverse drug events; assesses costs and customer satisfaction both before and after implementation.

Abstract:  DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): In an effort to improve patient safety and quality of care within our own facility, and to contribute to overall improvement of patient safety and quality of care in the healthcare industry, St. Joseph's primary goal is to implement an Epic system, in a clearly developed and documented manner that will be of benefit to other small hospitals. This project will build on research and discussion around patient safety and quality of care at our national Learning Lab held in Milwaukee in 2002. This Learning Lab was attended by nationally recognized patient safety leadership representing leaders from organizations active in patent safety. Community-wide diffusion of the Epic system will begin at our current small hospital as the lead partners and transfer to our new facility upon completion of construction and extend to multiple clinic sites, a community retail pharmacy, a new residential hospice facility and an 18-bed skilled nursing sub-acute care facility. We will document our safety-driven design principles and discuss the role Epic has in meeting these design principles, either directly or indirectly. Further, we will design around precarious events, specifically medication errors, by identifying the prevalence of medication errors, near misses and preventable adverse drug events in our current manual patient record and with our community partners systems and then again after Epic is implemented. We will measure the length of stay, cost per case-mixed adjusted DRG and customer satisfaction in our current system and then again after Epic is implemented. Finally, we will develop and document a clear HIT implementation report that can be utilized by AHRQ, other small community hospitals and research organizations.

Year 1 Funding:  $500,000

Estimated Total Funding:  $1.5 million

Principal Investigator:  John Reiling

Applicant Institution:  St. Joseph's Community Hospital

City/Town:  West Bend, Wisconsin

State:  Wisconsin

Grant Number:  UC1 HS15284

Category:  Implementation Grants (THQIT)

Thesaurus Terms:  biomedical automation, computer network, health care facility information system, health care quality, patient safety /medical error, computer assisted patient care, cooperative study, health care cost /financing, health care facility, hospice, hospital, hospital length of stay, interdisciplinary collaboration, patient care management, pharmacy, satisfaction, behavioral /social science research tag, clinical research, health services research tag, human subject

Project Start Date:  Sep 30, 2004

Project End Date:  Sep 29, 2007