Department of Medicine

Policy and Practice Improvements

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Policy and Practice Improvements

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The innovations brought about through the work of the Safer Dx Team has affected changes and improvements to policy and practices at both the VA and other health care organizations.

• Informed the Veterans Health Administration Directive 1088: Communicating Test Results to Providers and Patients which was dispersed to all Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) nationally to establish policy regarding communication of test results to providers and patients.

• Informed the report Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine), who cited 33 of the team's publications.

• Informed the Diagnostic Errors report World Health Organization (WHO) - Patient Safety in Primary Care that was circulated nationally to provide strategies that could be implemented to reduce diagnostic errors in primary care.

• Created Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) View Alert Notification checklist which was disseminated to all VISN directors and Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) in 2017.

• Developed 10 Strategies for Managing Notifications that was distributed to all Veterans Affairs facilities and is used for Computerized Patient Record System (CPRS) training.