(NISTIR 7952) Toward a Shared Approach for Ensuring Patient Safety with Enhanced Workflow Design for Electronic Health Records -- Summary of the Workshop

On April 19, 2013, 47 participants met at the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Baltimore, MD, for a NIST-sponsored full-day EHR Usability and Patient Safety Roundtable: Supporting Patient Safety Through EHR Design. In addition to representatives from the host organizations, there were 17 representatives from EHR developers, three clinical experts, and three academic representatives with expertise in human factors, information technology, and clinical safety. The goal of the workshop was to discuss and identify the common challenges and shared aspirations to design EHRs that better support complex clinical workflows with the ultimate goal of improving usability, patient safety and quality of care. At the workshop, common ground on challenges and aspirations were identified by the representatives of government, EHR developers, EHR users, and academics to improve patient safety, usability and human factors regarding workflows in the use of electronic health records. Achieving these objectives is necessary to enhance safe and effective care to all patients and increase the rate of adoption of electronic health records in the United States.