Assessing the healthcare quality issues for digital incident reporting in Sweden: Incident reports analysis

Md Shafiqur Rahman Jabin; Mary Steen; Dianne Wepa; Patrick Bergman

doi:10.1177/20552076231174307

Assessing the healthcare quality issues for digital incident reporting in Sweden: Incident reports analysis

Digit Health. 2023 May 8:9:20552076231174307. doi: 10.1177/20552076231174307. eCollection 2023 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Md Shafiqur Rahman Jabin^{1

2}, Mary Steen³, Dianne Wepa², Patrick Bergman¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine and Optometry, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden.
² Faculty of Health Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK.
³ Department of Nursing, Midwifery and Health, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Abstract

Objective: This study explored healthcare quality issues affecting the reporting and investigation levels of digital incident reporting systems.

Methods: A total of 38 health information technology-related incident reports (free-text narratives) were collected from one of Sweden's national incident reporting repositories. The incidents were analysed using an existing framework, i.e., the Health Information Technology Classification System, to identify the types of issues and consequences. The framework was applied in two fields, 'event description' by the reporters and 'manufacturer's measures', to assess the quality of reporting incidents by the reporters. Additionally, the contributing factors, i.e., either human or technical factors for both fields, were identified to evaluate the quality of the reported incidents.

Results: Five types of issues were identified and changes made between before-and-after investigations: Machine to software-related issues (n = 8), machine to use-related issues (n = 5), software to software-related issues (n = 5), use to software-related issues (n = 4) and use to use-related issues (n = 1). Over two-thirds (n = 15) of the incidents demonstrated a change in the contributing factors after the investigation. Only four incidents were identified as altering the consequences after the investigation.

Conclusion: This study shed some light on the issues of incident reporting and the gap between the reporting and investigation levels. Facilitating sufficient staff training sessions, agreeing on common terms for health information technology systems, refining the existing classifications systems, enforcing mini-root cause analysis, and ensuring unit-based local reporting and standard national reporting may help bridge the gap between reporting and investigation levels in digital incident reporting.

Keywords: Patient safety; classification system; hardware issues; health information technology; human factors; quality improvement; software issues; technical factors; training and education.