According to the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), 30% of all Health IT implementations fail. What causes failure? A workforce that doesnt want to change? Poor technology? Luck?
It’s unlikely to be any of these things. It is usually the inattention to workflow and culture that leads to failure of Health IT initiatives designed to improve patient safety.
What do hosptial IT execs know about the culture of their institutions? Probably not much. Aminstrators in general have different opinions of safety culture than front line staff (the latter see less safety). How often do we do post IT implementation and periodic surveys to see if workflow is indeed more “flowing” than bottlenecked? My guess is not very often or we would see these survey results at the top of every Health IT companies webpage. Most products now are only rated by IT execs through a propriatary report. We need a marketplace website for all thse like Amazon where end users can rate and evaluate the products!!
Read the chapter from Patient Safety and Quality for Nurses from the NIH
about workflow.
Cain C, Haque S. Organizational Workflow and Its Impact on Work Quality. In: Hughes RG, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Apr. Chapter 31. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2638/
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