SAFER Guides

Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides

The Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) guides are designed to help healthcare organizations conduct proactive self-assessments to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of their electronic health record (EHR) implementations.

A Sociotechnical Framework for Safety-Related Electronic Health Record Research Reporting: The SAFER Reporting Framework.

Using health IT to improve safety is a shared responsibility (44), and by using the SAFER Reporting Framework, researchers can help to enhance the understanding of implementation, effectiveness, and generalizability of EHR-based interventions needed to effectively reduce preventable harm.

Adherence to recommended electronic health record safety practices across eight health care organizations

The Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) guides were released in 2014 to help health systems conduct proactive risk assessment of electronic health record (EHR)- safety related policies, processes, procedures, and configurations. The extent to which SAFER recommendations are followed is unknown.

Pew Charitable Trusts and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) co-hosted Health IT Safety Day

On Dec. 6, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) co-hosted Health IT Safety Day, a meeting designed to shed light on the importance of enhancing the safety of electronic health records. Speakers from hospitals, academia, patient organizations, and the federal […]

A Socio-Technical Approach to Preventing, Mitigating, and Recovering from Ransomware Attacks

In this manuscript, we discuss a socio-technical approach to address ransomware and outline four overarching steps that organizations can undertake to secure an electronic health record (EHR) system and the underlying computing infrastructure.

ISQua Debate: Health Information Technology is already improving healthcare safety and current regulation around it is sufficient

ISQua Education is delighted to present our Global Debate for 2015: “Health Information Technology is already improving healthcare safety and current regulation around it is sufficient“. Substantial evidence exists to show that HIT can improve safety, and it is being increasingly widely adopted in many developed countries. While there […]

SAFER EHRs: A Video Introduction to the SAFER Guides

A short video created by Westat for the ONC that describes the SAFER Guides which are designed to help healthcare organizations conduct self-assessments to optimize the safety and safe use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the following areas: High Priority Practices, Organizational Responsibilities, Contingency Planning, System Configuration, System Interfaces, Patient Identification, […]

Webinar: ISQua on “Making Health Information Technology SAFER”

Here is a link to a webinar presented to the International Society for Quality in Healthcare (ISQua). The webinar provides an introduction and overview of the USA’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) sponsored SAFER Guides (Safety Assurance Factors for Electronic Health Record Resilience) project presented by Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH and Dean F. Sittig, PhD.

Click Here to view the webinar.

Timothy Kelley writes in “Managed Care” re: Can Computers ‘Do No Harm’?

Health information technology is improving patient safety. It can also help to create new kinds of errors, which may potentially harm patients in a phenomenon some are calling “e-iatrogenesis.” These known incidents may be just the tip of a large iceberg. Lawsuits, real or worried about, mean some reports may […]

The SAFER guides: empowering organizations to improve the safety and effectiveness of electronic health records

With support from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), we used a rigorous, iterative process to develop a set of 9 self-assessment tools to optimize the safety and safe use of EHRs. These tools, referred to as the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) guides, could be used to self-assess safety and effectiveness of EHR implementations, identify specific areas of vulnerability, and create solutions and culture change to mitigate risks.