Ineffective technology and a lack of reimbursement are among the reasons patient safety lags in healthcare organizations, a new survey finds.

The Health Catalyst online survey of 462 medical, quality and pharmacy professionals found that only 9% of respondents rated their organizations’ success in improving patient safety as “excellent.” The other survey takers chose either “somewhat good” or “very good” (79%), or “poor” (11%).

In addition to ineffective information technology and a lack of reimbursement for safety initiatives, other barriers preventing healthcare organizations from achieving their patient safety goals include: lack of resources; organization structure, culture or priorities; and changes in patient population and practice setting.

“The big picture takeaway from this survey is that although a small portion of respondents felt they have a good handle on their patient-safety efforts, the largest portion of respondents still believe that they have room for improvement,” said Valere Lemon, RN, MBA, a senior subject matter expert for Health Catalyst.

However, when asked where to focus patient improvement efforts, organizations had a difficult time deciding, rating four of the six choices within 3 points of each other.

Ultimately, “inpatient clinical” areas were rated the highest at 21.6%. Other areas of improvement included: operations (21.1%); severity of illness (19.5%); outpatient/ambulatory clinical (18.6%); and regulatory reporting (15.5%). “Other” made up the remaining 3.7% of survey takers.

One possible solution for improvement, Health Catalyst last week announced the release of the Patient Safety Monitor™ Suite: Surveillance Module, the industry’s first comprehensive patient safety application to use predictive and text analytics combined with concurrent clinician review of data to monitor, detect, predict and prevent threats to patient safety before harm can occur, according to the release.