The key feature of the newly amalgamated system is that it allows reports on adverse events to be made by citizens, patients and healthcare professionals, and for these to be kept anonymous. This removes any issue of recrimination and enables local and national authorities to focus instead on guarding against repeating mistakes. They can do this by collating records to provide study reports and, if appropriate, issue guidelines to healthcare professionals so that lessons can be shared and learned countrywide.

An example of the system in operation is that of a pharmaceutical company which was requested to change the font on its medicine labels so that doctors could see more clearly the decimal points in dosage guides. It is believed that previous errors in reading had caused overdoses which, tragically, may have been linked to at least two deaths.

The challenge
The existing adverse incident reporting system for secondary healthcare was launched with a great deal of excitement in 2004. However, the elation was short lived. Jorgen Hansen, a senior medical officer at the newly formed National Agency for Patient Rights and Complaints, which oversees Denmark’s healthcare reporting process, reveals that serious flaws were evident from the start.

"The old system has been less than ideal," Hansen admits. "It was designed by IT experts rather than healthcare professionals, which means it is not intuitive to use. It's also no good for logging reports on incidents of a similar nature, making it difficult to spot trends. Plus, of course, it's limited to secondary care."

"Primary and secondary care are very different fields," Hansen goes on. "In secondary care, we have hospitals, which are highly automated and rely heavily on computers. With primary care, there are not such sophisticated computer systems, and we suspect that more human errors occur, which is something else that needs to be addressed."

So, in 2010, the National Board of Health invited competitive bids to supply a new system that would begin by covering primary care and later widen to encompass secondary care and replace the existing model.

CSC was chosen to implement its adverse incident reporting solution, which is based on a special government edition of RL6, a leading incident management reporting application developed by RL Solutions.

The benefits
The much anticipated launch of CSC's solution has lived up to expectations. "The new system is working really well, exactly as we'd hoped," says Hansen. "It's a lot more intuitive for people to use, both medical staff and patients alike. It's more clearly laid out, more stable and faster than before."

From a healthcare strategy point of view, the new software has far more refined reporting capabilities in terms of identifying trends and providing managers with detailed information, and this will become more evident and useful as time goes on.

"The CSC solution automatically scours through records, enabling us to compile reports tailored to the type, time and location of incidents," explains Hansen. "It means we can give the authorities the most relevant and up-to-date recommendations possible."

The National Agency for Patient Rights and Complaints is now in the process of raising awareness of the CSC solution, urging healthcare users to file reports. In the first three months of operation in primary care alone, more than 1,000 reports were generated, and the board expects even more usage in secondary care once the system is up and running.

"It's a really positive result, and the word appears to be spreading," says Hansen. "To put it in perspective, when the old system was launched in secondary care in 2004, we received around 6,000 reports in that first year, while now we get around 40,000 reports a year. So the early uptake of the primary care system is very encouraging, especially when you consider that primary care historically generates fewer reports than secondary care."

Next steps
Hansen reveals that most of Q1 in 2011 is expected to be used for testing the new system. Once that's fully assimilated, the National Agency for Patient Rights and Complaints will begin work on a service which combines incident reporting with two further channels: compensation and insurance.

Hansen believes that many lessons could be learned by merging all three channels, or at least opening up data between the current silos. He says, "With the adverse incident reporting system, we want to be very clear that the incidents people report will never lead to compensation or disciplinary action: it's all about collective learning. If patients or family members wish to seek compensation or make an insurance claim, they need to raise a complaint with the Patient Insurance Association, an independent authority funded by the tax payers.

"If we have access to this additional information," Hansen goes on, "we're sure we can learn a great deal more to pass on to the healthcare authorities, so that's the next area of interest for us."

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About CSC
CSC is a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services through three primary lines of business. These include Business Solutions and Services, the Managed Services Sector and the North American Public Sector. CSC's advanced capabilities include system design and integration, information technology and business process outsourcing, applications software development, Web and application hosting, mission support and management consulting. The company has been recognized as a leader in the industry, including being named by FORTUNE Magazine as one of the World's Most Admired Companies for Information Technology Services (2011). Headquartered in Falls Church, VA., CSC has approximately 93,000 employees and reported revenue of $16.2 billion for the 12 months ended December 31, 2010. For more information, visit the company's website at www.csc.com.