Health IT and Patient Safety: Finding Relations Between EMRAM and SAFER Guides

Abstract

Objectives: The goal of this work was to identify relations between SAFER Guides and EMRAM requirements. Method: We conducted EMRAM requirements extraction based on materials provided by HIMSS Analytics Latin America. The process of SAFER Guides requirements extraction was performed based on the guidelines available on the ONC website. The authors identified three types of relations: direct; indirect; and partial. Results: We found 38 EMRAM requirements with some relation to SAFER Guides requirements. Out of 696 SAFER Guides requirements, we identified 108 relations to EMRAM requirements (15,5%) which indicates that EMRAM does not include most of SAFER Guides requirements. Conclusion: Despite EMRAM is more focused on Health IT maturity in organizations, it includes important requirements strictly related to patient safety not required by SAFER Guides. On the other side, most of SAFER Guides requirements are not addressed by EMRAM.