Patient safety comes first for every health care organization, but it's often difficult to determine where to direct initiatives. To help with that, ECRI Institute created its first annual list called the Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations.

The list was compiled based on data that was voluntarily submitted to ECRI's Patient Safety Organization (PSO). They have been collecting the data since 2009, and it includes more than 300,000 event reports, research requests and root-cause analyses.

"We're at a point where it's important to share where we're seeing recurring themes," Karen P. Zimmer, medical director of ECRI's patient safety, risk, and quality group and of the PSO, said in the list report.

The number one concern on the list is data integrity failures with health information technology systems. The government is giving out financial incentives for implementing electronic health records, which is causing more health care facilities to jump on board. But incorrect data can cause dire consequences for the patient.

"Health IT systems are very complex," James P. Keller, vice president of technology evaluation and safety at ECRI, said in the list report. "They are managing a lot of information, and it's easy to get something wrong."

Other concerns on the list are poor care coordination, drug shortages and mislabeled specimens.

ECRI's list also includes strategies that the health care organizations can take in order to prevent or improve those issues.

"Individuals in risk and quality departments can present this information to their organization's leadership to get the resources they need to improve safety," Catherine Pusey, manager of clinical analysts at ECRI Institute PSO, said in a statement.

This list is one of a series of "top 10" lists that ECRI distributes every year to guide health care facilities. The top 10 list of health technology hazards was the first list that ECRI created and its top 10 hospital C-suite watch list came later.

The patient safety list is not intended to replace an organization's discussions about how to prioritize initiatives, according to ECRI. Instead, it's meant to supplement it. "In a time of competing priorities and limited resources in health care, we encourage facilities to use the list as a starting point for patient safety discussions and for setting their patient safety priorities," Zimmer said.

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