Automated EHR adverse event monitoring

The Betsy Lehman Center is sponsoring a first-in-nation pilot of automated safety event monitoring in a diverse cohort of 6-8 acute care hospitals. The pilot is a foundational action step of the state's Roadmap to Health Care Safety for Massachusetts. 

Why?

Hospitals’ existing manual safety monitoring systems miss 90-95 percent of patient harm events. The pilot will deploy new technology that operates in the background of electronic health records and detects 10 times more serious safety events in near real time.  Hospitals get timely, clinically validated information to help quickly address identified risks. 

The pilot will:

• Save lives. Early-adopter hospitals in other states are achieving unprece­dented reductions in patient harm — around 25 percent overall, and 60-80 percent of certain types of harm.
• Save money. Hospitals are seeing high returns on investment through reductions in lengths of stay, risk management costs, and liability claims. As a major payer of health care claims, the Commonwealth also stands to benefit financially with reduced lengths of stay and follow-up care for MassHealth members that experience harm.
• Promote health equity. Racial and other disparities in safety reporting and outcomes are well-documented. Automated tools eliminate the human biases that lead to underreporting and will help close the gap in safety outcomes.
• Support the workforce. Automation eases the burden of manual reporting and reveals patterns that enable leaders and staff to prioritize safety improvement efforts.
• Inform state health care policy. Data from the pilot will open a unique window into patient safety outcomes, risks, and trends not currently available. The pilot also includes an economic impact analysis that will measure cost savings to the state.