We have previously studied system failures involved in medication errors using a limited number of root cause analyses as source. The aim of this study was to describe a larger number of medication errors with respect to harm, involved medicines and involved system problems - thus providing information for the development of IT-based decision support. We evaluated 3,520 medication error reports derived from 12 months of consecutive reporting from 13 hospitals in the Capital Region of Denmark. We found 0.65% errors with serious harm and 16% with moderate harm. A small number of medicines were involved in the majority of the errors. The problems in the medication error process were heterogeneous. Some were related to specific medicines and others were related to the computerized order entry system. Accordingly decision support targeted at specific medicines and improved IT systems are part of the continuing work to reduce the frequency of medication errors.
A prerequisite for using administrative data to study the care of critically ill patients in intensive care units (ICUs) is that it accurately identifies such care. Only limited data exist on this subject.
To assess the accuracy of administrative data in the Canadian province of Manitoba for identifying the existence, number, and timing of admissions to adult ICUs.
For the period 1999 to 2008, we compared information about ICU care from Manitoba hospital abstracts, with the criterion standard of a clinical ICU database that includes all admissions to adult ICUs in its largest city of Winnipeg. Comparisons were made before and after a national change in administrative data requirements that mandated specific data elements identifying the existence and timing of ICU care.
In both time intervals, hospital abstracts were extremely accurate in identifying the presence of ICU care, with positive predictive values exceeding 98% and negative predictive values exceeding 99%. Administrative data correctly identified the number of separate ICU admissions for 93% of ICU-containing hospitalizations; inaccuracy increased with more ICU stays per hospitalization. Hospital abstracts were highly accurate for identifying the timing of ICU care, but only for hospitalizations containing a single ICU admission.
Under current national-reporting requirements, hospital administrative data in Canada can be used to accurately identify and quantify ICU care. The high accuracy of Manitoba administrative data under the previous reporting standards, which lacked standardized coding elements specific to ICU care, may not be generalizable to other Canadian jurisdictions.
Using the POPULIS framework, this project estimated health care expenditures across the entire population of Manitoba for inpatient and outpatient hospital utilization, physician visits, mental health inpatient, and nursing home utilization.
This estimated expenditure information was then used to compare per capita expenditures relative to premature mortality rates across the various areas of Manitoba.
Considerable variation in health care expenditures was found, with those areas having high premature mortality rates also having higher health care expenditures.
[A municipal order for the delivery of medical care to the population of a specific area as a variant in onging planning (the estimation of the critical services volume)].
Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research, Department of Education, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 47 FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland. sampsa.hyysalo@helsinki.fi
This paper aims to present an activity-theoretical method for studying the effects of user participation in IS development.
This method is developed through a case study of the process of designing a diabetes database.
The method consists of a historical analysis of the design process, an ethnographical study of the use of the database, and researcher-driven interventions into the on-going user-producer interaction. In the historical analysis, we study particularly which user groups of the database have influenced the design work and which perspectives need to be incorporated into the design in the near future. An analytical model consisting of perspectives on local design, particular technology, and societal domain is introduced as a conceptual tool for this analysis. We also introduce the possibility of employing the historical analysis in guiding an ethnographical study of the user sites and researcher-driven interventions, which provide the participants with tools for improving their design process.
The diffusion and adoption of information technology innovations (e.g. mobile information technology) in healthcare organizations involves a dynamic process of change with multiple stakeholders with competing interests, varying commitments, and conflicting values. Nevertheless, the extant literature on mobile information technology diffusion and adoption has predominantly focused on organizations and individuals as the unit of analysis, with little emphasis on the environment in which healthcare organizations are embedded. We propose the social worlds approach as a promising theoretical lens for dealing with this limitation together with reports from a case study of a mobile information technology innovation in elderly home care in Denmark including both the sociopolitical and organizational levels in the analysis. Using the notions of social worlds, trajectories, and boundary objects enables us to show how mobile information technology innovation in Danish home care can facilitate negotiation and collaboration across different social worlds in one setting while becoming a source of tension and conflicts in others. The trajectory of mobile information technology adoption was shaped by influential stakeholders in the Danish home care sector. Boundary objects across multiple social worlds legitimized the adoption, but the use arrangement afforded by the new technology interfered with important aspects of home care practices, creating resistance among the healthcare personnel.
The information acquisition, decision-making and control system must be the basic tool for optimizing the information procedures in the interests of sanitary-epidemiological welfare of troops. It's necessary to make a thorough revision of the existing account and record documentation in order to study its value. Each pattern of record cards must be scientifically substantiated depending on its effectiveness for further decision making. It's necessary to exclude all futile information. Record and account procedures must be automated and computerized throughout all chains of command beginning from a single military unit. Special systems must be developed for this matter. Realization of these goals will completely assure the monitoring of health status indices of servicemen and the environmental situation, as well as monitoring of risk factors influence upon the health of personnel.
In order to support decisions and analyze outcomes, the Spanish Health System has shown a great interest in developing data bases and high quality information systems. Nevertheless the use of these data bases are limited, not very systematized and, some times, their accessibility may be difficult.
We describe in this review the experience in using the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Science (ICES, Ontario, Canada) as an efficient model to improve the usefulness of these data bases.
Under restrictive conditions of confidentiality and privacy, the ICES has the legal capacity to use several population based data bases, for research projects and reports. ICES's functional structure (with an administrative and scientific level) is an interesting framework since it guarantees its independent and economic assessment.
To date, its scientific production has been high in many areas of knowledge and open to those interested, with points of view of many health care professionals (including management), for whom the quality of research is of the ultimate importance, to be able to access these resources.
