|
PARK RIDGE, Ill. (October 1, 2003) Words are used
to communicate ideas from one person to another, but they also enable
physicians to compare the care of one patient to another- provided
that everyone uses the same words.
In an effort to improve patient safety, The Anesthesia Patient
Safety Foundation (APSF) has joined forces with Systemized Nomenclature
of Medicine (SNOMED) International, seeking to create and enhance
a universal anesthesia language.
In this collaboration, the two organizations will work together
to standardize the lexicon used by hospital and clinical information
systems. These electronic record-keeping systems will then be able
to gather standardized patient data and also support documentation
in the operating room, improve data collection, allow data comparability
and reduce anesthetic mishaps. The collaboration agreement with
SNOMED was announced this week.
"By joining together, the APSF can integrate [into SNOMED]
our Data Dictionary, which describes anesthetic terms and omits
regional variations so we all record the same anesthetic language,"
Ellison S. Pierce, Jr., M.D., executive director of the APSF said.
"The structure of SNOMED will allow the ongoing development
of North American anesthesia terms in an established process."
The clinical terms will also be used by the National Library of
Medicine's Unified Medical Language System and will be updated semiannually
by SNOMED, a division of the College of American Pathologists (CAP).
The work is beneficial for business and management issues, but
more importantly, it is a major patient safety undertaking, Dr.
Pierce said.
"It has been difficult for doctors to gather meaningful data
because there are many different automated system manufactures,
and there are hospitals that have developed their own data-collecting
methods without the use of automated systems," he said.
By automating the record-keeping system, there will be more time
for doctors to spend with patients, and the data collected will
help make future medical records more concise and medical treatment
better and safer, Dr. Pierce said.
"With the automated system, doctors can analyze different
aspects of anesthesia and determine what is best for the patient,"
Robert K. Stoelting, M.D., president of the APSF, said. "Patient
safety will be improved because we will be able to gather data about
millions of anesthetics and use that data to develop best practices."
Best practices serve as guidelines for doctors to compare what
drugs and techniques work best for patients. The leading manufacturers
of automated systems also recognize that a common language is critical
to better research and have joined with the APSF and SNOMED to implement
the Data Dictionary.
"The key to improving any system is to be able to measure
it. Without the data being standardized, that's impossible,"
Dr. Stoelting said. "If you can measure outcomes and give feedback
to doctors managing the process, they can figure out ways to improve
treatment."
"We will continue to work together with the assistance of
our colleagues from the United Kingdom and Canada to create a Data
Dictionary within SNOMED that serves most of the English-speaking
world."
Founded in 1984, the APSF has been recognized for its leadership
in the cause of protecting patient safety in a report from the National
Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine in 1999 titled, "To
Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System." Also, the Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has enlisted APSF's assistance
in developing a National Center for Patient Safety, and the American
Medical Association used APSF as a model when creating the National
Patient Safety Foundation in 1998.
MEDIA NOTE: For more information, visit www.snomed.org
and www.apsf.org.
|
