Health Affairs November, 2018
ABSTRACT
Twenty years after publication of the report To Err Is Human, studies demonstrate persisting high levels of patient harm. Most patient safety measurement remains highly retrospective, relying on voluntary reporting and post discharge administrative coding. Progress has been limited by the lack of advances in measurement accuracy, detection sensitivity, and timely actionability. The broad adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) offers a significant opportunity to leverage digital information to improve safety measurement and management using real-time data. We developed a novel method to extract safety indicators from EHRs to identify harm and its precursors by...