Improvements in reporting

By: April Lacey

The first step toward fixing a problem is knowing that one exists.  EPIC Screen Shot One Page

At UF Health Shands Hospital, risk management and quality leaders rely on staff members reporting patient safety events in order to make changes that will improve the quality of care patients receive. To improve this process, significant upgrades have been made recently to the patient safety reporting system. Here are some of the benefits of the system upgrades:

• A link to the patient safety reporting system has been built into EPIC for easier access.

• Similar to tracking a package shipment, staff members who report events will now receive automated emails about the progress of the investigation. 

• Staff members can now help triage how soon a risk manager reviews their event by indicating whether it needs routine review or assessment within 24 hours, or if it is a major harm event needing immediate attention.

• The Association for Healthcare Research and Quality scoring system is now incorporated to improve trending reports. Aside from providing more consistency within reports, adding the scoring system will also allow leaders to better compare UF Health with other institutions across the country. 

• The entire investigation process is now aligned with “Just Culture” principles, which means when errors occur, leaders look to redesign processes to make them more fail-proof, rather than simply blaming individual employees.