Symposium:
The elephant in the room - organizational design and management of healthcare
One of the biggest challenges of the 21st century will be redesigning healthcare. The costs of healthcare continue to grow (partly due to population aging), but quality and safety do not improve concurrently. If this situation does not change, healthcare delivery will become too costly in many countries. In order to achieve the quality gap and develop a new healthcare system for the 21st century, the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) has proposed to: “to continually reduce the burden of illness, injury, and disability, and to improve the health and functioning of the people of the United States.”
There is need for a human factors (system) approach to improve healthcare and healthcare processes. Human Factors is applied to healthcare to design processes, devices, and systems that support the work of caregivers in medicine. Specific benefits of Human Factors and System Safety Engineering applied to healthcare include: efficient care processes; effective communication between providers; reduced risk of medical device error; easier to use health information technology; costs savings through prevention and mitigation of events and improved patient outcomes.
In this symposium we will organize three sessions:
- A human factors systems approach to healthcare (healthcare as a socio-technical system, including coordination of care)
- Health Information Technology (implementation and evaluation of health IT, including the technology (Electronic Health Records (EHR), Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE), Health Information Exchange (HIE), Computer Decision Support (CDS), alerts, and the patient portal
- Patient centered healthcare (healthcare delivery and health processes from a patient’s perspective)
The aim of this symposium is to examine organization and design of healthcare from a human factors perspective. We invite you to submit papers about human factors in healthcare.
Contact: Peter Hoonakker: phoonakker@cqpi.engr.wisc.edu