"The more sophisticated the electronics, the less familiarity people have with doing calculations or writing notes on paper, and the harder it's going to be to prepare for and to cover [during a downtime]," explained Ellen Deutsch, MD, medical director of patient safety, risk, and quality, ECRI, to participants at the daylong Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety meeting. "Partnering for Transformation," held September 16, 2016, at ECRI.
Unplanned system downtime should be treated like any emergency. It will have a significant effect on workflows from registration through discharge. Therefore, the organization should prepare for such an event like it prepares for other emergencies, with backup plans, drills and simulated scenarios, and other proactive risk assessments and tools.
Use this self-assessment questionnaire in conjunction with the following resources to review your unplanned downtime policies and procedures. Then, use the attached action plan template to track resulting projects, initiatives, and reviews.
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Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) can be used to identify compliance with best practices and opportunities for improvement. They include questions based on laws, regulations, standards, professional society guidelines and statements, and best practices identified by the clinical literature. Each SAQ also includes an Action Plan to help document next steps and responsible parties.
SAQs are available both as PDFs, for use as-is, or as Microsoft Word documents, which can be edited to suit your organization's custom needs, such as by adding questions regarding local or state requirements that may not be represented.
Complete this SAQ annually and whenever significant organizational changes occur.