PATIENT SAFETY
ACHIEVING A NEW STANDARD FOR CARE
Philip Aspden, Janet M. Corrigan, Julie Wolcott, and Shari M. Erickson, Editors
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The views presented in this report are those of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety and are not necessarily those of the funding agencies.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Patient safety : achieving a new standard for care / Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety, Board on Health Care Services ; Philip Aspden … [et al.], editors.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-309-09077-6 (hardcover)
1. Medical records—Standards—United States. 2. Medical informatics. 3. Medical errors—Data processing—Standards—United States.
[DNLM: 1. Medical Errors—prevention & control—United States. 2. Health Policy—United States. 3. Information Services—standards—United States. 4. Patient Care—standards—United States. 5. Policy Making—United States. 6. Risk Management—United States. 7. Safety Management—United States. WB 100 P2975 2004] I. Aspden, Philip. II. Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety.
R864.P38 2004
651.5′04261—dc22
2004001869
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COMMITTEE ON DATA STANDARDS FOR PATIENT SAFETY
PAUL C. TANG (Chair), Chief Medical Information Officer,
Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and
Associate Clinical Professor,
University of California, San Francisco
MOLLY JOEL COYE (Vice-Chair), CEO,
Health Technology Center
SUZANNE BAKKEN, Alumni Professor of Nursing and Professor of Biomedical Informatics,
Columbia University
E. ANDREW BALAS, Dean,
School of Public Health, Saint Louis University
DAVID W. BATES, Chief,
Division of General Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital;
Medical Director of Clinical and Quality Analysis,
Partners Healthcare System; and
Associate Professor of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School
JOHN R. CLARKE, Professor of Surgery,
Drexel University, and
Adjunct Professor of Computer and Information Science,
University of Pennsylvania
DAVID C. CLASSEN, Vice President,
First Consulting Group, and
Associate Professor of Medicine,
University of Utah
SIMON P. COHN, National Director of Health Information Policy,
Kaiser Permanente
CAROL CRONIN, Consumer Health Information Consultant
JONATHAN S. EINBINDER, Assistant Professor,
Harvard Medical School, and
Corporate Manager,
Partners Health Care Information Systems
LARRY D. GRANDIA, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Premier, Inc.
W. ED HAMMOND, Professor,
Division of Medical Informatics, Duke University
BRENT C. JAMES, Executive Director,
Intermountain Health Care Institute for Health Care Delivery Research, and
Vice President for Medical Research,
Intermountain Health Care
KEVIN B. JOHNSON, Associate Professor and Vice Chair,
Department of Biomedical Informatics, and
Associate Professor,
Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University
JILL ROSENTHAL, Project Manager,
National Academy for State Health Policy
TJERK W. van der SCHAAF, Associate Professor of Human Factors in Risk Control,
Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven Safety Management Group, Department of Technology Management
Study Staff
PHILIP ASPDEN, Study Director
JULIE WOLCOTT, Program Officer
SHARI ERICKSON, Research Associate
DANITZA VALDIVIA, Senior Project Assistant
REBECCA BENSON, Senior Project Assistant
Health Care Services Board
JANET M. CORRIGAN, Director
ANTHONY BURTON, Administrative Assistant
Editorial Consultants
RONA BRIERE, Briere Associates, Inc.
ALISA DECATUR, Briere Associates, Inc.
Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
ENRIQUETA C. BOND, Burroughs Wellcome Fund
WILLIAM A. BORNSTEIN, Emory Healthcare
RICHARD BOTNEY, Oregon Health & Science University
CAROL C. DIAMOND, Markle Foundation
HAROLD S. KAPLAN, Columbia University
CLEMENT J. MCDONALD, Regenstrief Institute for Health Care, Indiana University
ROBERT L. PHILLIPS, American Academy of Family Physicians
NANCY RIDLEY, Massachusetts Department of Public Health
WILLIAM B. RUNCIMAN, Australian Patient Safety Foundation, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Australia
PAUL M. SCHYVE, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Don E. Detmer, University of Cambridge and University of Virginia, and John Bailar, University of Chicago, Professor Emeritus. Appointed by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, they were responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
Preface
Just as the health care system has started to come to grips with the threat of patient safety concerns, new data are expanding the scope of the threat. Unintended harm arising from medical management is not limited to the hospital setting; nor is it limited to acts of commission. The Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety believes that patient safety should be a new standard for quality care—care that is free of unintended injury from acts of commission or omission, in any setting in which it is delivered. Consequently, data standards needed to support patient safety go well beyond the needs of adverse event and near-miss reporting. In this report, we describe a vision of patient safety systems integrated with clinical information systems and recommend strategies to create data standards that support that vision.
The past 2 years have seen three very positive developments with regard to clinical data standards. In October 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) established the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative to articulate and execute a strategy for the adoption of health care interoperability standards by federally operated and funded health care providers. Given the purchasing power of the federal government, representing more than 40 percent of health care expenditures in the United States, the incorporation of the standards into government programs will be a powerful and effective means of establishing these standards on a national basis. On March 20, 2003, HHS Secretary Thompson announced that the federal government, including DHHS, the Department of Defense, and the
Veterans Administration, would adopt the first set of standards for the electronic exchange of clinical health information. In June 2003, the Markle Foundation Connecting for Health Initiative published the results of a 9-month collaborative of private- and public-sector leaders that outlined a series of important steps toward the completion and adoption of health care information data standards to enable the sharing of clinical information. A follow-up Markle initiative is likely. Finally, on July 1, 2003, HHS Secretary Thompson announced that DHHS had signed an agreement with the College of American Pathologists to license the college’s standardized medical vocabulary system (SNOMED) and make it available without charge throughout the United States. This means that an important clinical data standards building block will be accessible to all in the health care industry.
The recommendations given in this report build on these three major initiatives to provide a road map for the development and adoption of a comprehensive set of national health care information standards that support patient safety.
A number of previous Institute of Medicine studies have called for increased investment in information systems as an essential technology for delivering care in the 21st century. This report, along with the committee’s letter report on the Electronic Health Record that was released in July 2003, begins to lay the foundation and framework for a national health information infrastructure. The data standards described in this report refer not only to the actual data elements that populate medical records and patient safety reports but also to a new cultural standard that uses data to continuously improve patient safety. Our report calls upon national leadership to transform the uncomfortable status quo, whereby clinicians practice in a delivery system riddled with latent system failures, into an environment where patient safety is not only state of the art but also a new standard of care.
This report represents the culmination of dedicated effort by several groups of people. I would like to thank my fellow committee members, who have worked long and diligently on this challenging study; the members of the study liaison panel, who helped with our deliberations at three committee meetings; the many experts who provided formal testimony to the committee and informal advice throughout the study; and the staff of the Health Care Services Board who managed the study and coordinated the writing of the final report.
Paul C. Tang, M.D., M.S.
Chair
November 2003
Foreword
This report is at the intersection of two important and complementary streams of Institute of Medicine (IOM) work. One stream is focused on improving the quality of care in America and the other on fostering the use of information technology within the health care system.
The IOM’s quality initiative began with the National Roundtable on Health Care Quality, which raised awareness of the overuse, misuse, and underuse of health care services. This was followed by the release of two reports, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, which put forward ideas for redesigning the health care delivery system to raise the standards of care to the levels of the best clinical practice.
In 1991, the IOM issued the report The Computer-Based Patient Record, which called for the elimination of paper-based records within 10 years. A key recommendation of that report was to develop uniform national standards for health care data. A revised edition of the report, published in 1997, reaffirmed the messages of the initial version. Earlier this year, at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services, the IOM carried out a fast-track study that built on ideas from The Computer-Based Patient Record to identify the core delivery-related functionalities of an electronic health record system.
Crossing the Quality Chasm calls for a concerted national commitment to building an information infrastructure to support health care delivery. Fundamental to such an information infrastructure are health care data stan-
dards. This report puts forward a road map for the development of these standards in the context of delivering high-quality, safe care. I believe that the conditions for implementing this road map are now extremely favorable.
Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D.
President, Institute of Medicine
November 2003
Acknowledgments
The Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety wishes to acknowledge the many people whose contributions and support made this report possible.
The committee especially recognizes the members of the liaison panel: Jim Bagian, Michael Cohen, Linda J. Connell, Suzanne Delbanco, Marie Dotseth, Frederick J. Heigel, Betsy L. Humphreys, Stephen F. Jencks, Kenneth W. Kizer, Dr. Linda McKibben, Paul M. Schyve, and Janet Woodcock.
The committee benefited from presentations made by a number of experts over the past 2 years. The following individuals shared their research, experience, and perspectives with the committee: Jared Adair, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Diane Aschman, SNOMED International; James Battles, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Claire Broome, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Lynn Chevalier, New York State Department of Health; Gary Christopherson, Veterans Health Administration; John Combes, The Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania; Paul Conlon, Michigan Health and Safety Coalition; Diane Cousins, U.S. Pharmacopeia; John Declaris, The Kevric Company, Inc.; Henry Desmarais, Health Insurance Association of America; Charles Fahey, Milbank Memorial Fund; Loretta Fauerbach, Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology; Clive Flashman, National Patient Safety Agency, U.K.; Ellen Flink, New York State Department of Health; Nancy Foster, American Hospital Association; Kathe Fox, The MEDSTAT Group; Margaret Glavin, Resources for the Future; David Hopkins, Pacific
Business Group on Health; Helen Hughes, National Patient Safety Agency, U.K.; Betsy Humphreys, National Library of Medicine; Harold Kaplan, Columbia University; David Lansky, Foundation for Accountability; Kathryn Lesh, The Kevric Company, Inc.; Randy Levin, Food and Drug Administration; Janet Marchibroda, eHealth Initiative; Clement McDonald, Indiana University School of Medicine; Scott McKnight, Veterans Health Administration, Michigan; Gregg Meyer, MGPO Massachusetts General Hospital; Blackford Middleton, Partners Healthcare System, Inc.; Jean Narcisi, American Medical Association; John Oldham, Medical University of South Carolina; Marc Overhage, Regenstrief Institute for Health Care; Wilson Pace, University of Colorado; Donna Payne, Child Health Corporation of America; Susan Penfield, Booz Allen Hamilton; Robert Phillips, American Academy of Family Physicians; Nancy Ridley, Massachusetts Department of Public Health; Karlene Roberts, University of California, Berkeley; John Rother, American Association of Retired Persons; Bill Runciman, Australian Patient Safety Foundation; Julie Sanderson-Austin, American Medical Group Association; Joyce Sensmeier, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society; Robert Slack, Alcoa; Stanton Smullens, Thomas Jefferson University; Cheri Throop, Child Health Corporation of America; C. Peter Waegemann, Medical Records Institute; and Scott Williams, Utah Department of Health.
The following individuals were important sources of information, generously giving their time and knowledge to further the committee’s aims: Andrew Chang, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; Rosanna M. Coffey, The MEDSTAT Group; Carol C. Diamond, the Markle Foundation; Gary Dickinson, Misys Healthcare; Susan Dovey, The Robert Graham Center; Noel Eldridge, Department of Veterans Affairs; Linda Fischetti, Department of Veterans Affairs; Michael Fitzmaurice, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Ellen M. Flink, New York State Department of Health; Douglas Godesky, Department of Health and Human Services; John Gosbee, Veterans Affairs National Center for Patient Safety; Marjorie S. Greenberg, National Center for Statistics; Shirley Kellie, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Scott A. Laidlaw, DoctorQuality; Ned McCulloch, IBM; Sue Osborn, National Patient Safety Agency, U.K.; Anna Polk, Agency for Health Care Administration, Florida; Wes Rishel, Gartner Research; Frances Stewart, U.S. Navy; Margaret VanAmringe, Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations; Karen VanHentenryck, Health Level Seven, Inc.; Susan Williams, National Patient Safety Agency, U.K.; William A. Yasnoff, Department of Health and Human Services; and Scott Young, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The committee commissioned seven papers that provided important background information and insights for the report. Paul Barach, University of Chicago, authored a helpful paper providing an overview of reporting systems. David Brailer, CareScience, wrote an overview of the use and adoption of computer-based patient records in the United States. Richard Cook, University of Chicago, provided a paper on patient safety metrics and analysis strategies. Carol Friedman, Columbia University, authored a paper on natural language processing, while W. Ed Hammond, Duke University, provided a paper on data standards and patient safety. John McDonough, Brandeis University, wrote a paper on organizational systems and hazard analysis. Additionally, Luke Sato, Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions, supplied a piece on data protection.
The committee also benefited from the work of other committees and staff of the Institute of Medicine that conducted studies relevant to this report. The committee particularly benefited from the efforts of the Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America and the Committee on Identifying Priority Areas for Quality Improvement. The Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America produced the 2000 report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and the 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. The Committee on Identifying Priority Areas for Quality Improvement produced the 2003 report Priority Areas for National Action: Transforming Health Care Quality.
The committee would like to acknowledge the particular contributions of Suzanne Bakken, Jonathan Einbinder, and Larry Grandia in developing a standards-based mechanism for an integrated national health information infrastructure (Chapter 2), Brent James in drafting an innovative approach to patient safety systems (Chapter 5) and specific patient safety applications (Chapter 8), and Tjerk van der Schaaf in crafting a model for the collection and analysis of near-miss data (Chapter 7).
Finally, funding for the project came from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The committee extends special thanks to AHRQ for providing such support, and within AHRQ, to Jim Battles and Rob Borotkanics for their assistance throughout the project.