Health Information Technology in Healthcare Quality

please respond to the following disucssion post as a peer making a comment. Healthcare facilities are now using health information technology initiatives to improve patient quality and safety in preventing reportable events, identify them before they become issues, and act on events that are thought to be unavoidable, (SS Feldman,2018). Automated reminders and alerts are useful in providing essential information that supports safe and effective clinical decisions. Such alerts in the electronic health record (EHR) are a standard mechanism for the use of health IT for the prevention of potential missed quality and patient safety events.

For example, immunization alerts have led to a 12% increase in a well-child and a 22% increase in sick child immunization administration and drug alerts have been associated with a 22% decrease in medication prescription errors, (SS Feldman,2018). Soft stops can provide key information about a potential quality or patient safety issue. During nursing practice, the use of electronic medication administration record systems assists in the detection of potential errors for instance when the nurse scans the patient armband and medication barcode, if the medication was given too soon, the system will provide a warning message on the computer screen for the nurse to stop and act.

Reference.

SS Feldman (2018). Health Information Technology in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety: Literature review

https://medinform.jmir.org/2018/2/e10264