The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and the ECRI Institute are partnering in a pilot project to promote patient safety and quality care through the reduction of health IT risk, and enhancing health IT innovation. The project, the Partnership for Promoting Health IT Patient Safety, will create a national framework to proactively identify and resolve health IT safety issues based on various HIT events and hazards.
Under the project, AHIMA will join ECRI Institute’s variety of partners, including healthcare providers, health IT vendors, public policy organizations and other professional organizations, to collect health data, analyze it and report results to improve patient safety within health IT. AHIMA will support the adaptation and dissemination of lessons learned to its members and other stakeholders.
“Patient safety has always been a top priority for AHIMA and our members,” said AHIMA CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon, in a prepared statement. “AHIMA’s participation in this vital project will help identify current and future patient safety risks. We can then work together to develop strategies to remedy these problems and ideally prevent them from occurring again. AHIMA is delighted to be part of this multi-stakeholder partnership to generate new knowledge on safe health IT practices. ”
AHIMA and ECRI are also planning to develop resources on health IT hazards including webinars for AHIMA’s members and a panel discussion during AHIMA’s Annual Convention and Exhibit in San Diego in October.
