Reducing Medical Errors and Increasing Patient Safety

This chapter will describe the interrelationship between ICT, total relationship medicine approach, 5 Q and reducing medical errors and increasing patient safety. Medical errors are one of the Nation's leading causes of death and injury. A report published in 2000 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that as many as 44,000 to 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year as the result of medical errors. By 2004 the result was 195000 die and 1 000 000 excess injures by the medical errors. This means that more people die from medical errors than from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. Few studies have been conducted to investigate the link between technological, technical and functional quality dimensions and the level of patient's safety, medical errors and patient satisfaction in the healthcare sector. None of the identified studies have empirically examined how the atmosphere, interaction and infrastructure which focuses on availability of technology might prevent the medical errors and impact overall patient's quality perception and satisfaction.

Determinants of Patient Safety and Trust With Focus on Health Care Information Technology (HIT) and Physicians-Nurses Performance

The purpose of this chapter is to assess and examine the impact health care information technology (HIT) on physician-nurse performance related to patient trust and safety. A considerable number of patients today are using different HITs to get access to healthcare services such as appointment scheduling and medication refills; communicate with physicians and nurses for different computerized tailored interventions to manage a chronic condition or to change a health behavior. Improving the quality and safety of care, and reducing the medical errors are of equal responsibility of all clinicians and all healthcare staff. Patient safety is the most critical factor of the medical and healthcare quality, where nurses can be invaluable in preventing harm to patients, reducing errors and improving patients' outcomes. The chapter shows that there are many advantages of Web-acquired healthcare related information. The main question is how will efficient use of HIT by patients improve healthcare quality, patient trust and safety.

A Knowledge Triangle Perspective of ICT Innovation in HealthCare

Chronic diseases (CD) are one of the most critical problems of the twenty-first century. CDs and health conditions are incredibly varied, ranging from asthma, cardiovascular to arthritis to diabetes and from cancers to epilepsy and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Healthcare systems face challenges delivering care across the globe and the premature deaths of an estimated number of 550,000 working-age people across European Union countries is caused by chronic diseases, including heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and cancer. The chapter focuses on the implementation and use of new te-health system and applications as well as the holistic knowledge triangle innovation for enforcing Research, Education, ICT and medical/healthcare sector. The overall aim of this study is to describe and analyses the main different key contribution of education, research and the health sector professional to innovate and develop the te-health and other healthcare services to ensure that the patients experience a full safety life.

Cybernization of the Healthcare Organization of the Cyber World

The health information technology (HIT) era has rapidly changed how medical and healthcare sector communicate, diagnose, treat and cure patients. Advances such social media, instant messaging, and e-mails all created to make communication faster, easier and more convenient between families and friends and people across great distances. In our modern cyber world this is done by augmenting innate human knowledge handling capabilities with computer-based technology (CBT). This chapter provides a holistic perspective of technologization or cybernization of different organizational relationships. This chapter shows that ICT can be used to remove or destroy inner and external barriers between people, organizations and departments or functions. By failing to utilize HIT and a technologicalship philosophy, a healthcare organizations risk being isolated, while successful healthcare organizations move ahead toward the rest of the 21st century with its borderless or virtual reality.

ICT Role in Creating the Imaginary E-Health Organization and a Collaborative Value System for the Health of the Nation

Today's ICT, globalization as well as other environmental changes forced organizations to recognize that the essence of an organization is to cooperate. Now, many organizations are beginning or ‘forced' to create the borderless and imaginary type of organization. Creating an imaginary organization is an efficient alternative to cooperate through strategic networks, as long as the sum of production and organizational costs is less than ‘going it alone'. The medicine and medical sector display a specific strong network component consisting of a considerable number of senior academic and non-academic physicians and professional consultants related to each other on collegial grounds. Such an informal network (e.g. individuals, small clinics, medicine researchers) can be described as an imaginary organization (IO). This chapter provides knowledge of how to develop an imaginary healthcare organization (HIO) as a necessary tool to achieve a sufficiently large scale of operation and substantial growth of knowledge, within a context where their own conventional resources are very limited.

Quality, Innovation, and Differentiation (QID) and Total Healthcare Relationship Model (THRM)

During the last two decades, the privatisation, deregulation, internationalisation and globalisation of healthcare sectors, healthcare organisations have found the need to innovate new devices and patient treatment tools to cure illnesses and improve life quality of people. These trends place quality of healthcare services, innovation and differentiation (QID) at the heart of the healthcare organisation´s sustainable patient safety strategies. It should be recognised that health improvement through Quality, Innovation and Differentiation is not a one-time event. Improved technological innovation and quality are complementary, thus we argue in this chapter that QID are the triple engines of achieving the ultimate goal of reducing medical errors and assuring patient safety. The purpose of this chapter is to advance the understanding of the triangle relationship between QID to improve strategies available to healthcare organisations. This chapter also highlights how these approaches, i.e. QID and THRM can integrate and add impetus to successful healthcare strategies.