Detecting Med Errors in Rural Hospitals Using Technology

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DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), Mississippi's Information and Quality Healthcare (IQH), and eight small rural hospitals throughout Mississippi propose to implement a program using health information technology (HIT) to improve patient safety and quality of health care. C. Andrew Brown, M.D., M.P.H., director of UMMC's Patient Safety Center, will serve as the program's principal investigator. Dr. Brown's co-investigators represent an interdisciplinary team of M.D.s, Pharm.D.s, epidemiologists, nurses, biostatisticians, educators, and information technologists. Of the eight rural hospitals, five are situated in the Mississippi Delta, and three are located in east central Mississippi. All participating hospitals have less than 100 beds. The goals of the proposed program are to: (1) introduce voluntary, anonymous, electronic medical error and ADE reporting in eight small, rural hospitals (less than 100 beds) in Mississippi; (2) identify barriers to implementation of HIT, including educational, cultural, technological, and intangible issues, such as reticence and resistance; (3) ascertain the epidemiology and root cause of medical errors and ADEs in small, rural hospitals; (4) formulate educational and continuous quality improvement (CQI) strategies that are specific to small, rural hospitals in partnership with the participating hospitals; (5) develop, demonstrate, and evaluate strategies in partnership with the participating institutions for reducing errors and, ultimately, improving patient safety throughout Mississippi, and, by extension, in other rural areas, based on the data we gather; and (6) disseminate the results of our research and the Ql strategies we develop in partnership with our participating institutions throughout the health care industry.