The topic of population health often comes up in conversations about healthcare quality as organizations aim to leverage information about their patient populations to improve the quality of care they provide. However, a focus on population health goes beyond just improving quality—at its core, population health management enhances the fundamental safety of patient care.

During the dot-com boom, many new companies based their business plans upon the volume of website visits. The revenue models assumed that by capturing the attention of users as measured by clicks on the company website, the organizations would generate wild profits through…something. Companies offered free products and services claiming that these Internet visits would deliver market share and revenue. In fact, many of these companies never thought through their business models nor understood their real costs.

There has been an intense and ironic debate surrounding the request to delay Stage 2 Meaningful Use or at least postpone the assessment of compliance. Instead of charging forward to engage patients in the digital space, much of the industry is looking for opportunities to further postpone the assessment of compliance.

 The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has created an online resource of information about work-related injuries and illnesses among people who work in hospitals and other healthcare settings. These workers face hazards that range from needlesticks to muscle strains, falls, and communicable diseases as well as violent injury and death caused by angry or deranged patients, family members, or other members of the public. And they are injured on the job more often than workers in any other profession.

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When technology seems too big for its britches, or we let it run the show, many of us remind ourselves that “it’s just a tool,” hoping that observation will help us put technology in its place and restore the world’s balance. The bandwidth currently consumed by health information technology (IT), especially electronic health records (EHRs), has increased to such a point today that we all might wish that intoning, “It’s just a tool,” were enough to regain control.

Medication shortages have steadily increased over the past decade due to a number of factors affecting drug supply. Perhaps the first and worst hit has been the hematology/oncology area, which has been dealing with shortages and the need to redesign chemotherapy protocols for a number of years. Within the past three years we have seen an increasing trend of drug shortages that have occurred and continue with no resolution or intermittent supplies returning to the market.

At Myrtue Medical Center (MMC), a 25-bed critical access hospital (CAH) in Harlan, Iowa. the quality improvement team had been contemplating how information technology could help the hospital deliver improved care to its patients. Even though the government’s electronic health records (EHR) incentive program had not yet been unveiled back in 2007, Myrtue’s Quality Improvement Team recognized the value of electronic health records that included advanced functionality such as computerized provider order entry.

Technological advancements often present new hazards even as they solve existing problems; electronic health records (EHRs) are no exception to that rule. CRICO—the medical malpractice insurer for the Harvard medical community and a leading patient safety resource—has expanded its coding system to capture information about incidents related to the use of EHRs. In this article, CRICO shares what it is learning about how to avoid the downside of information technology.