Improving patient safety remains a critical issue for health care systems, with significant preventable morbidity and mortality resulting from medical care. Despite progress made in recognizing and preventing adverse events, much remains to be done to make health care safe and reliable. In particular, patient safety in ambulatory, or outpatient, settings remains understudied despite the majority of health care taking place in ambulatory settings with over 1 billion annual outpatient visits in the United States.
ASCENT was created because of the morbidity, mortality and costs that come from failure to detect and address clinical abnormalities that lead to harm, and to reduce the harm from medication, misunderstanding, and misuse. These challenges are exacerbated in safety-net health care settings, which often lack critical health information technology (HIT) infrastructure and resources to devote to safety programs. Because low-income and racial and ethnic minority populations are disproportionately cared for in safety-net settings, safety-net health systems must lead the charge in developing safety solutions in order to reduce health disparities.
Solutions developed in well-resourced, cutting-edge health systems serving advantaged patient populations are unlikely to be feasible in the safety net. Therefore, we situate ASCENT in the public delivery system of the city and county of San Francisco, the San Francisco Health Network.
Our Goals
ASCENT is an implementation science project poised to design and develop workflows and health information technology (HIT) facilitated interventions that prevent medical errors and improve the safety of ambulatory care. Given the marginal status of many of the patients served in the San Francisco Health Network, ASCENT seeks to ameliorate health disparities faced by underserved populations.
Our Projects
ASCENT is made up of three related projects:
- Project 1: Timely, accurate tracking and management of abnormal subcritical test results across Electronic Health Records
- Project 2: Monitoring of populations with high-risk conditions or receiving high-risk treatments to ensure appropriate follow-up care and prevent harm or disability in the San Francisco Health Network primary care and specialty care settings.
- Project 3: Improving medication safety and adherence by standardizing the implementation of the Universal Medical Schedule/ConcordantRX instructions across San Francisco Health Network electronic prescribing platforms.
More information about each of these projects can be found by clicking on their headings on the menu to the right.