September 17, 2024 has been designated World Patient Safety Day. Promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is a day focused on raising public awareness and fostering collaboration between patients, health workers, policymakers, and healthcare leaders to improve patient safety. The 2024 theme is “Improving diagnosis for patient safety” with the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!” to highlight the critical importance of correct and timely diagnosis in ensuring patient safety and improving health outcomes.

According to the WHO, diagnostic safety can be significantly improved by addressing the systems-based issues and cognitive factors that result in diagnostic errors, which account for 16% of preventable patient harm. Issues include communication failures between health workers or health workers and patients, heavy workloads, and ineffective teamwork. Cognitive factors involve clinician training and experience as well as predisposition to biases, fatigue, and stress.

Timely and accurate diagnoses are essential for positive patient outcomes, and as EHR vendors, we are committed to advancing patient safety through the delivery of safe, clinically relevant health IT.

“Timely and accurate diagnoses are essential for positive patient outcomes, and as EHR vendors, we are committed to advancing patient safety through the delivery of safe, clinically relevant health IT,” share Michael Blackman (Greenway Health), MD, Chair, and Marijo Carnino (MEDITECH), Vice Chair, of the EHR Association Patient Safety Workgroup.

They add: “Information sharing, patient consent considerations, management of sensitive data, and artificial intelligence are just some of the many trending topics on our radar this past year that align with World Patient Safety Day 2024’s focus on advancing initiatives to ‘Get it right, make it safe!’ By fostering collaboration and promoting the use of health information technology in both the solutions our members deliver to the market and the feedback we provide on federal and state regulations, we aim to enhance safety and ultimately improve patient care.”

A Commitment to Patient Safety

Patient safety is a top priority of the EHR Association, which is comprised of 29 companies that supply the vast majority of EHRs to physicians’ practices and hospitals across the U.S. EHR developers have a longstanding commitment to patient safety, which must be considered from the earliest stages of the development process and includes all aspects of EHR use. The goal is to ensure patients get the best possible care with a clinician experience that is free from undue burden. It takes collaboration to share experiences relative to patient safety and the reduction of errors. 

Our commitment to patient safety is reflected in our EHR Developer Code of Conduct. The Patient Safety Workgroup carries out this commitment by actively monitoring, contributing to, and engaging with federal agencies, Patient Safety Organizations, trade associations, professional societies, liability carriers, academics, and other stakeholders to collaborate on efforts to promote a culture of safety in health IT and evolve a non-punitive national learning system. It supports the active involvement of all stakeholders in patient safety initiatives, as providers, patients, healthcare organizations, human factors and usability experts, technology and security experts, and policymakers all bring unique perspectives to the table. Ensuring patient safety in an evolving, complex, data-rich system requires a continuous feedback loop in a non-punitive, collaborative learning environment.