System Ensures Awareness of Special Safety Risks
A new tool, the Clinical Action Safety Plan Evaluating Risk (CASPER) deployed at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle ensures that all clinicians are aware of any special safety precautions. In addition, this new rule provides the clinicians with relevant information about how to manage these considerations, as described in the report from Health Data Management.
The system was initially created after a parent tried to leave the hospital with their child, a patient, inappropriately. Clinicians now receive alerts when a patient is labeled a CASPER case. Alerts are issued either when logging on to either the clinical information or the computerized physician order entry systems.
The tool was created by a nurse on the information technology team at the facility. She particularly sought the input of the facility’s social workers. She devised a new approach to organize all clinical information to support sharing of this critical data with each patient’s caregivers.
CASPER was initially created as a paper-based system which only contained a limited amount of information. The system was significantly revised and updated and CASPER was put into an online format. The hospital refined the tool with the PowerForm tool from Cerner Corporation.
The hospital’s system for admissions, transfers, and admissions also issues flags for CASPER cases. Flags are also issued for staff members that greet visitors coming in to the facility.
July 22, 2008 Related topics: New Technology & Innovation, Quality, Safety, Errors, Pediatrics