Additional Statement on Medical Errors

National Summit on Medical Errors and Patient Safety Research

Inova Health System

Additional Statement, Submitted by Betty Ann Wilkins, Director, Risk Management, Inova Health System, Falls Church, VA

The first National Summit on Medical Errors and Patient Safety Research was held on September 11, 2000, in Washington, DC. Sponsored by the Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force (QuIC), the Summit’s goal was to review the information needs of individuals involved in reducing medical errors and improving patient safety. More importantly, the summit set a coordinated and usable research agenda for the future to answer these identified needs.

Selected applicants testified at the summit as members of the witness panels. The remainder of the applicants were invited to submit additional statements for consideration by the steering committee. One of these statements follows.

Disclaimer and Copyright Statements

Research questions:

Can data collection and analysis of near misses, incidents and adverse events be standardized? Specifically, can the terms and theoretical framework used for the data collection be agreed upon by users to provide us with a language and process used across the healthcare system?

At this time, hundreds, if not thousands, of incident databases exist through the work of health care risk managers. The forms that are used to collect the data and the processes used to analyze the information differ. This is a mechanism of data collection that is familiar to health care providers. It would be far easier to adjust something that already exists and has a legacy of information than to reinvent yet another system. I would suggest that funding be used to :

Help risk managers move their data collection to new level to provide for the needs of patient safety activities.
Organize groups of risk managers to combine, collapse and redesign their data collection tools, first at local levels, then regional and finally one national group to develop a final product.

Thank you for your consideration.

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Current as of September 2000

Internet Citation:

Inova Health System. Additional Statement by Betty Ann Wilkins. National Summit on Medical Errors and Patient Safety Research. September 2000. http://www.quic.gov/summit/ainova.htm

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