About the Safer Dx Team
The Safer Dx team is a multidisciplinary team focused on the improvement of patient safety and the reduction of diagnostic errors. The team approaches this goal through several methods, ranging from the development of trigger algorithms for Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to proactively monitor for delays in test result follow-up to the creation of guidelines for safe EHR usage in the form of the SAFER Guides.
Our award-winning team consists of physicians and professionals from a range of fields - including social science, cognitive psychology, public health, internal medicine, computer science and human factors engineering – all dedicated to the same goal of improving patient safety. Every member of the team works in partnership on research projects as needed to provide a wide network of experience.
Our team is a part of IQuESt – the Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety. IQuESt is a partnership between the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service and Baylor College of Medicine. We are located in Houston, Texas, and frequently collaborate with other VA and non-VA health care facilities around the country.
Safer Dx Team Projects
Our team's research is funded by a combination of government-sponsored grants (including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development Service) and private foundation grants (such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation). View the team's projects and funding sources for our research.
Research
The Safer Dx Team often collaborates with health care organizations on a variety of different projects to advance patient safety and diagnostic error research. The team publishes their findings in various high-impact journals and disseminates their research by speaking at events and conferences throughout the country.
Featured Publication
Patient perceptions of receiving test results via online portals: a mixed-methods study. (Giardina TD, Baldwin J, Nystrom DT, et al., 2017) A mixed-methods study was conducted to explore patients’ experiences and preferences when accessing their test results via patient portals.
Featured Safer Dx Team News
Patients Want Web Access To Test Results But Don't Want To Have To Be A Doctor to Understand Them -
Forbes discussed patient portals and usability, ideas from the team's recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
