"Every error counts": a web-based incident reporting and learning system for general practice.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare quality improvement
• Patient safety research
• Primary care medicine

Background:

• Incident reporting systems are crucial for identifying healthcare safety risks, primarily in inpatient settings.
• Knowledge regarding medical errors and patient safety reporting systems in general practice is limited.
• This study introduces a novel incident reporting system tailored for general practices in German-speaking regions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and structure of a new incident reporting system for general practices.
• To present the initial findings from this system regarding medical errors and patient safety.
• To establish a platform for learning from reported incidents in primary care.

Main Methods:

• Development of a web-based, anonymous incident reporting system named Jeder Fehler Zaehlt (JFZ).
• Classification and expert analysis of submitted incident reports.
• Publication of exemplary incidents and user-commentary features for shared learning.

Main Results:

• The JFZ system received 199 reports in 17 months, with 188 classifiable.
• Process errors constituted 72.9% of reports, followed by knowledge/skills errors (26.1%).
• Treatment errors (32.2%), communication errors (12.6%), and investigation errors (8.5%) were most common; 41.5% of errors caused patient harm.

Conclusions:

• The JFZ incident reporting system is functional and expanding.
• Future work will focus on increasing system utilization and diversifying reported incident types.
• Enhancing patient safety in general practice requires robust reporting and analysis of medical errors.