Does IT Enhance Patient Safety? Let's See Proof

Of course, the news isn't all bad. I've seen lots of solid data to support the value of IT in improving patient safety.

One of the problems facing surgeons who prescribe preoperative antibiotics is to get staffers to discontinue the drugs within 24 hours of the procedure. Continuing to take the drugs beyond that window increases the risk of drug-resistant infection, yet, on average, only about 40% of patients have their antibiotics stopped on time.

Kevin Haynes and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that using a specially designed physician order system that tracks the duration of antibiotic therapy and instructs clinicians to stop the medication significantly improved discontinuance rates.

Similarly, several urban hospitals in Texas have shown that IT tools can improve patient outcomes. They measured hospitals' level of automation and found that a 10-point increase in physicians' use of automated notes and records reduced the odds of hospital fatalities by 15%.

Several other studies have shown that IT improves patient safety and care. As healthcare IT matures, it continues to offer clinicians tools they could have only dreamed of a decade ago. Frankly, the medical community can use all the help it can get.

If you've followed the patient safety dialogue over the last several years, you remember the Institute of Medicine's 2000 report that found a disturbing number of medical errors occurring in U.S. hospitals. Just the other day, David Classen and his colleagues from the University of Utah and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement published a new report that found medical errors and other adverse events occur during one out of every three hospital admissions. That's about 10 times the previous estimate! Clearly, we have a lot of work ahead of us. I have little doubt that IT's pool of talent are up to the task.

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Paul Cerrato is editor of InformationWeek Healthcare.