As many of you would know, adverse events (medical errors) are reported to be anywhere between 4.5% and 20% of people admitted into our health system (depending on whose research you are reading). Two of the major causes of these adverse events are medical miscommunication and the lack of a QA system to support decision making. Below is a feature on Dr Michael Buist, an intensive care specialist at Dandenong Hospital in Melbourne, who has developed a software solution called Patientrack to reduce the incidence of adverse events in hospital. Dr Buist is working with one of Microsoft’s Partners called MKM Consulting to commercialise the software. What is particularly brilliant about this work is that it is focussing in the area, Microsoft believes is under emphasised in Healthcare Reform …. improving communication in Healthcare, rather than simply assuming that the digitisation of medical data will reduce medical misadventure. The work that Dr Buist and MKM Consulting are doing is to build QA systems that improves communication by both expediting the escalation path and speed of communication, as well as making sure that the escalation path is going to the right person to reduce dead end dialogs.

The Australian Story Episode can be viewed at: http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/doctorhouse/default.htm (if you don’t have time to watch the full episode, start from 12 minutes in)

image