How SAFER Guides Enhance Affected person Security and Medical Threat Administration

Incorporating the brand new Middle for Medicare & Medicaid Companies (“CMS”) SAFER Information advisable practices into the configuration of your digital well being document (“EHR”) system can produce substantial advantages past compliance. These suggestions characterize a roadmap for lowering errors in affected person care, resulting in a discount in affected person hurt, medical malpractice and different monetary dangers.

Of the 9 SAFER guides, the 4 “scientific course of guides” (#s 6-9) embrace many highly effective countermeasures that may be utilized throughout the continuum of care. They’re targeted on affected person evaluation, diagnostic decision-making, check ordering and interpretation, and follow-up in supplier/supplier communications.

Whereas the brand new CMS necessities mandate an annual self-attestation as as to whether you will have accomplished every particular suggestion, there’s at the moment no penalty related to responding within the destructive. Nevertheless, devoting time and sources to assembly the SAFER Information suggestions can deal with vital gaps in your establishment’s affected person security course of and program.

This will present a possible aggressive benefit by lowering affected person hurt, limiting medical legal responsibility publicity, rising clinician and workers confidence and satisfaction, and defending your group’s model within the market.

The place Malpractice Claims Occur within the Strategy of Care

All through the supply of affected person care, there are numerous areas of threat that may be mitigated by optimizing your EHR system, as proven in Desk 1. The left-hand column enumerates a typical 12-step “affected person journey.” The column on the appropriate incorporates the frequency, of which every discrete step is related to medical malpractice claims from a whitepaper revealed by CRICO, the malpractice and risk-prevention analysis arm of the Harvard Hospital Programs. The information was extracted from a nationwide cohort of high-performing hospitals that contribute instances to CRICO’s claims comparative database:

Desk 1: Strategy of care map with related frequency of med-mal claims.

The place the SAFER Guides Make a Affected person Security Affect:

Every SAFER Information suggestion can impression multiple process-of-care step, thereby multiplying its impact on stopping affected person hurt and reducing monetary threat. The desk beneath maps two instance suggestions from every of the 4 scientific course of SAFER Guides and hyperlinks these suggestions to the person strategy of care step(s) that may obtain a security enchancment and threat discount as a consequence of its implementation.

Desk 2 reveals examples that exhibit the connection between SAFER scientific course of information suggestions and reaching reductions in frequent medical errors all through the affected person journey. The highly effective threat and security countermeasures contained within the SAFER scientific course of guides may help your group scale back affected person hurt and decrease monetary dangers associated to errors in care supply. These enhancements can translate right into a aggressive benefit by way of diminished affected person hurt, decreased monetary threat and elevated workers satisfaction.

Desk 2: Potential strategy of care impression of implementation of instance suggestions from the SAFER Medical Course of Guides, numbers 6-9.