This session has been approved by the American Board of Preventive Medicine as a Patient Safety Activity required for diplomates certifying or re-certifying in Preventive Medicine.

While some progress has been made in the area of patient safety, researchers and policymakers agree that much more needs to be done. In particular, the field of outpatient safety is only now beginning to get more attention by the academic and practice communities. For example, most health care entities (e.g., health plans, hospitals, clinics) have not examined patient safety from an outpatient perspective including transitions from inpatient to outpatient settings. Preventive medicine (PM) specialists have an important role to play in advancing outpatient setting since the delivery of certain clinical preventive services clearly have patient safety implications (e.g., prompt follow-up of abnormal cancer screening results). In addition, characterizing the descriptive epidemiology of patient safety problems in the outpatient setting and developing the solutions are well suited to the population health knowledge, skills, and experience of appropriately trained PM specialists.

• Discuss types of patient safety concerns involving diagnosis, including follow-up of abnormal cancer screens, that can occur in electronic health record (EHR)-enabled outpatient settings. 
• Describe the burden of diagnostic safety concerns in EHR-enabled outpatient care. 
• Identify conceptual frameworks and potential areas for solutions for mitigating diagnostic safety risks in EHR-enabled health care and also list specific ways that the field of preventive medicine can advance patient safety.