Sailing Into the Wind:

This book examines the first 10 years of policy implementation for Health Information Technology (HIT) in three patient safety systems (Barcode Medication Administration (BCMA), Computerized Prescriber Order Entry (CPOE), and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). since the landmark IOM report, To Err Is Human (2000) showed that 98,000 deaths occur in hospitals each year due to preventable medical errors. After ten years, there are still relatively few hospitals that have implemented these strategies. Descriptive statistics were examined of the means as an aggregate, and for each system, to determine a rank order for implementation barriers and policy impacts. Thirteen null hypotheses were constructed and tested for each system, a total of 39 hypotheses. Within each hypothesis 14 implementation barriers and 7 policy impacts were tested. We failed to reject all hypotheses with the independent variable of age, but found significant findings at the p>.05 level (reject the null hypothesis) for other hypotheses, particularly for implementation barriers by executive group. Qualitative data were most revealing with significant new findings from the group of nurse executives interviewed.