The Taranaki District Health Board has implemented an integrated electronic solution from Australian software development company PowerHealth Solutions, in a bid to manage incidents, complaints and risk with the Datix safety learning system.

The Taranaki DHB is the first of the five Midland DHBs in New Zealand to introduce the system.

The Datix launch at Taranaki DHB coincides with New Zealand's release of the Health, Quality - Safety Commission's (HQSC) “Learning from Adverse Events” report, which places a greater emphasis on learning from all serious adverse events.

“Health care is demanding and Taranaki DHB staff do an excellent job at providing very competent and professional care to improve the health of our patients,” says Dr Greg Simmons, Taranaki DHB chief medical advisor.

“Over the past year, 29,618 people have been admitted and cared for at Taranaki Base and Hawera hospitals and the vast majority are treated without incident,” he says.

“Everyone comes to work to do a good job, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, things do go wrong which is upsetting for everyone involved,” Simmons explains.

“The adverse event reporting process is about learning from our experiences and identifying system issues rather than finding an individual to blame.

“The implementation with the Midland DHBs has seen a single instance of the Datix safety learning system deployed on a shared platform across the entire Midland region,” explains Paul Woodward, PowerHealth Solutions Datix manager.

“In doing so, the Midland DHBs have a common and consistent system to report and manage incidents, complaints and risk which introduces the ability to benchmark between the DHBs,” he says.

“The Midland DHBs are the first in the Australia/New Zealand region to go-live with Datix version 14 and to take advantage of the many new features that have been introduced as a result of feedback from the international Datix community,” Woodward adds.

“This system will make it a lot easier to record adverse and near miss events and enable analysis and meaningful reporting at both a unit and organisational level,” Simmons says.

“We'll be able to look at trends, including the identification of issues and risks we need to address to increase safety and minimise adverse events.