Enhancing Patient Safety Event Reporting. A Systematic Review of System Design Features

Electronic patient safety event reporting (e-reporting) is an effective mechanism to learn from errors and enhance patient safety. Unfortunately, the value of e-reporting system (a software or web server based platform) in patient safety research is greatly overshadowed by low quality reporting. This paper aims at revealing the current status of system features, detecting potential gaps in system design, and accordingly proposing suggestions for future design and implementation of the system.

Three literature databases were searched for publications that contain informative descriptions of e-reporting systems. In addition, both online publicly accessible reporting forms and systems were investigated.

48 systems were identified and reviewed. 11 system design features and their frequencies of occurrence (Top 5: widgets (41), anonymity or confidentiality (29), hierarchy (20), validator (17), review notification (15)) were identified and summarized into a system hierarchical model.

The model indicated the current e-reporting systems are at an immature stage in their development, and discussed their future development direction toward efficient and effective systems to improve patient safety.