Overview

Our project aims to identify causes of diagnostic error in the inpatient setting, and design and develop a suite of EHR integrated tools to aid in their prevention.

Department

Department of Medicine

Division

Division of General Internal Medicine

Collaborators

Our team includes investigators with expertise in quality improvement, patient safety, informatics, statistics, systems and human factors engineering, as well as research assistants, data analysts, software developers, and others. We have an advisory board with national experts in hospital medicine, patient safety, diagnostic error, and systems and human factors engineering.

Status/Stage of Development

Planning

Measurement

First, we are identifying representative cases of common symptoms and conditions obtained from our hospital quality assurance forum, morbidity and mortality reviews, and patient and family relations to analyze root causes of error. For our quantitative evaluation, we are developing a rigorous EHR chart review process that uses a validated instrument to confirm the presence of diagnostic error(s) and identifies the processes that lead to these errors. We are also collecting qualitative data via structured interviews and focus groups with patient and clinician participants about their general impressions of diagnostic error before and after implementation. We will use quantitative and qualitative data to guide design and development of our intervention. We will then evaluate our intervention prospectively using this same approach.

Results

We are currently in the early, problem analysis phase in which we are identifying cases for analysis, collecting quantitative and qualitative data, and determining user requirements for the intervention.

Major Project Needs

• Presentation opportunities