Smart Healthcare Safety from ECRI

A new wave of wearable health technology includes compact, personal-use blood pressure devices, such as wrist-worn activity-tracking devices, or as small handheld devices. These products are available in the consumer market and are typically interfaced with a smartphone application. The app provides a platform to record and store blood pressure measurements and to share the data with a physician. In this episode, we'll talk about ECRI's evaluation of three wearable blood pressure monitor models, our concerns, and what consumers and providers should know. Their compact size and design could make these devices a convenient alternative to using cumbersome conventional cuff-type blood pressure monitors for taking daily measurements—but only if they perform accurately. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or email clientservices@ecri.org.

In this episode, we're talking about postincident investigations, which are a crucial part of a risk and safety program in any healthcare setting. The primary purpose of the initial investigation of an incident or near miss is to collect facts, which the organization will later analyze with the ultimate goal of improving care and services. Thus, thorough investigations are the foundation of efforts to learn from incidents and near misses. Even when an investigation is required (e.g., statute, regulation, an accreditor), aging services providers should optimize the opportunity to learn and improve. When done well, internal incident reporting and initial investigations help to enhance quality and prevent incidents and resulting harm. The facts collected facilitate many postincident response practices. Check out our white paper on Incident Investigation in Aging Services. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or email clientservices@ecri.org.

Access to accurate, up-to-date drug allergy information is a vital component to effective, safe, and timely patient care. This information comes directly from patients and from information contained in the electronic health record. Recommendations available to improve drug-allergy information to prevent adverse events have not been widely implemented. The safe practice recommendations are available from the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety; additional information is available from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. In this special episode produced in conjunction with the Partnership, we look at how technology and clinical decision support could improve how drug and allergy information is handled. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or email clientservices@ecri.org.

In the world of risk management, we often talk about what providers should document when they care for patients, like the details of the patient's vital signs, to ensure the patient record is complete and accurate. In this episode of Smart Healthcare Safety from ECRI Institute, we're answering recurring questions we get from members regarding other aspects of medical record maintenance—like what to do when a routine audit identifies hundreds of records that have been left unlocked by providers who no longer work for the organization. We'll discuss issues that arise especially in EHRs and steps providers and the organization need to take to protect the integrity of individual records and EHR systems as a whole. Members of ECRI are able to ask our experts a variety of questions, like the ones we discussed in today's episode or a recent request for advice in developing policy to ensure continuity of care when a provider leaves a practice. Interested in learning more about our individual risk management support? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or email clientservices@ecri.org.

In this special episode produced in conjunction with the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety, we look at safe practice recommendations for opioid prescribing. The United States is in the midst of a deadly opioid use epidemic, which we see contributing to a decline in U.S. life expectancy. To help reverse this trend, ECRI Institute and the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) recognized the unique opportunity to collaborate on safety issues by combining EHR developer expertise, information, and perspectives with the Partnership’s evidence, knowledge, data, and data analysis available from ECRI Institute in its role as a Patient Safety Organization. The safe practice recommendations are available from the Partnership; additional safety resources are available from EHRA. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or email clientservices@ecri.org.

Surgical staplers are complex medical devices, and ECRI Institute has warned of potential risks for nearly a decade in our Top 10 Health Technology Hazard reports and in more than 40 hazard and alert notifications; our Accident and Forensic Investigation team has reviewed cases of staplers jammed on tissue or otherwise involved in patient injury. Despite these concerns, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has classified them as Class I, or low risk, devices. The issue gained public attention in a Kaiser Health Network report, followed by a May 2019 FDA meeting to consider reclassifying the devices as higher risk. In this episode, we talk to Scott Lucas, Director of ECRI Institute's Accident and Forensic Investigation, who presented at the FDA meeting, and Julie Miller, Senior Project Engineer, who has evaluated surgical staplers for ECRI Institute's Health Devices program.

A hospital room design contest led to so many ideas for reducing infection risk that there was no winner. Instead, competing architecture firms worked together to put patients first and make sure that all the best ideas were put into place. In this episode, ECRI Institute's Mark Macyk, a Risk Management Analyst, shares details about the contest and which steps to take to reduce infection risk in patient rooms without undergoing new construction or significant renovations. Read more about The Contest That No One Won. ECRI Institute PSO members can login to see the video Respiratory Assessment of the Patient Receiving Opioids, part of the 2017 ECRI Institute PSO Deep Dive. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or e-mail clientservices@ecri.org.

A March 2019 warning from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration highlights a vulnerability in certain implanted cardiac devices, raising concerns that these lifesaving devices could be susceptible to malfunctions caused by hackers. In this episode, ECRI Institute's Juuso Leinonen, Senior Project Officer, and Chad Waters, Senior Cybersecurity Engineer, discuss the scope of the risk, steps providers should take, and just how worried patients with these implanted devices should be. ECRI’s Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2019 identified cybersecurity threats with hackers exploiting remote access vulnerabilities as a top concern. ECRI members can login to read about the FDA alert and about Cybersecurity Essentials. Interested in learning more? Contact us at 610.825.6000 or e-mail clientservices@ecri.org.