Exploring SEIPS 2.0 as a model for analyzing care transitions across work systems.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Quality and Safety
• Human Factors and Ergonomics
• Systems Engineering

Background:

• Care transitions, particularly from emergency departments (ED) to home, are common for older adults and pose significant quality and safety issues.
• Analyzing processes spanning multiple work systems, like care transitions, presents a complex challenge for Human Factors/Ergonomics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore older adults' ED-to-home care transitions using the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) 2.0 model.
• To assess the utility of the SEIPS 2.0 model's 'configuration' concept in analyzing cross-system care transitions.

Main Methods:

• Application of the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) 2.0 model, focusing on the 'configuration' concept.
• Analysis of work system barriers and interactions during older adults' transitions from the ED to home.

Main Results:

• The SEIPS 2.0 model's configuration concept effectively identifies and models interacting work system barriers across systems.
• The current SEIPS 2.0 model does not explicitly capture or analyze the system boundaries that are crossed during care transitions.

Conclusions:

• Configuration is valuable for understanding cross-system barriers in care transitions.
• Future SEIPS iterations require a mechanism to identify and analyze specific boundary types crossed during transitions to fully address complexity.