Optimal critical test result communication is a Joint Commission national patient safety goal and... more Optimal critical test result communication is a Joint Commission national patient safety goal and requires documentation of closed-loop communication among care providers in the medical record. Electronic alert notification systems can facilitate an auditable process for creating alerts for transmission and acknowledgement of critical test results. We evaluated the impact of a patient safety initiative with an alert notification system on reducing critical results lacking documented communication, and assessed potential overuse of the alerting system for communicating results. We implemented an alert notification system-Alert Notification of Critical Results (ANCR)-in January 2010. We reviewed radiology reports finalised in 2009-2014 which lacked documented communication between the radiologist and another care provider, and assessed the impact of ANCR on the proportion of such reports with critical findings, using trend analysis over 10 semiannual time periods. To evaluate potentia...
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Jan 2, 2015
To assess whether integrating critical result management software-Alert Notification of Critical ... more To assess whether integrating critical result management software-Alert Notification of Critical Results (ANCR)-with an electronic health record (EHR)-based results management application impacts closed-loop communication and follow-up of nonurgent, clinically significant radiology results by primary care providers (PCPs). This institutional review board-approved study was conducted at a large academic medical center. Postintervention, PCPs could acknowledge nonurgent, clinically significant ANCR-generated alerts ("alerts") within ANCR or the EHR. Primary outcome was the proportion of alerts acknowledged via EHR over a 24-month postintervention. Chart abstractions for a random sample of alerts 12 months preintervention and 24 months postintervention were reviewed, and the follow-up rate of actionable alerts (eg, performing follow-up imaging, administering antibiotics) was estimated. Pre- and postintervention rates were compared using the Fisher exact test. Postintervention...
Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is essential for high quality care in the critical and a... more Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is essential for high quality care in the critical and acute-specialty care hospital setting. Effective PFCC requires clinicians to form an integrated interprofessional team to collaboratively engage with the patient/family and contribute to a shared patient-centered plan of care. We conducted observations on a critical care and specialty unit to understand the plan of care activities and workflow documentation requirements for nurses and physicians to inform the development of a shared patient-centered plan of care to support patient engagement. We identified siloed plan of care documentation, with workflow opportunities to converge the nurses plan of care with the physician planned To-do lists and quality and safety checklists. Integration of nurses and physicians plan of care activities into a shared plan of care is a feasible and valuable step toward interprofessional teams that effectively engage patients in plan of care activities.
Patient engagement has been identified as a key strategy for improving patient outcomes. In this ... more Patient engagement has been identified as a key strategy for improving patient outcomes. In this paper, we describe the development and pilot testing of a web-based patient centered toolkit (PCTK) prototype to improve access to health information and to engage hospitalized patients and caregivers in the plan of care. Individual and group interviews were used to identify plan of care functional and workflow requirements and user interface design enhancements. Qualitative methods within a participatory design approach supported the development of a PCTK prototype that will be implemented on intensive care and oncology units to engage patients and professional care team members developing their plan of care during an acute hospitalization.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Jan 21, 2015
Failure to follow-up nonurgent, clinically significant test results (CSTRs) is an ambulatory pati... more Failure to follow-up nonurgent, clinically significant test results (CSTRs) is an ambulatory patient safety concern. Tools within electronic health records (EHRs) may facilitate test result acknowledgment, but their utility with regard to nonurgent CSTRs is unclear. We measured use of an acknowledgment tool by 146 primary care physicians (PCPs) at 13 network-affiliated practices that use the same EHR. We then surveyed PCPs to assess use of, satisfaction with, and desired enhancements to the acknowledgment tool. The rate of acknowledgment of non-urgent CSTRs by PCPs was 78%. Of 73 survey respondents, 72 reported taking one or more actions after reviewing a CSTR; fewer (40-75%) reported that using the acknowledgment tool was helpful for a specific purpose. Forty-six (64%) were satisfied with the tool. Both satisfied and nonsatisfied PCPs reported that enhancements linking acknowledgment to routine actions would be useful. EHR vendors should consider enhancements to acknowledgment func...
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of mortality in dialysis patients. Pulse wave ana... more Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of mortality in dialysis patients. Pulse wave analysis (PWA) of the radial artery provides a non-invasive measure of small (C2) vessel compliance which may predict future CVD. Decreased small vessel compliance in particular has been ...
High-quality discharge summaries are a key component of a safe transition in care. The purpose of... more High-quality discharge summaries are a key component of a safe transition in care. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of standardised feedback and a 'discharge time-out' (DTO) on the quality of discharge summaries. During 2006-2007, the authors trained hospitalists to provide two interventions at their discretion: (1) feedback on one discharge summary to each intern using a standardised form and (2) a DTO, modelled after the surgical time-out, in which key questions about the patient's hospital course and discharge plan are answered verbally by the intern during rounds on the day of discharge. To evaluate these interventions, trained clinicians, blinded to group assignment, performed an explicit review of two discharge summaries before and after intervention implementation. The authors used a mixed linear model to evaluate relative improvement over time. The authors compared 14 interns who only received a 1-h lecture and a small-group resident-led training session with 13 interns who also received feedback and 12 interns who received feedback and a DTO. Save greater improvement in the documentation of tasks to be completed after discharge (39% vs 8% absolute improvement, p=0.05) by interns receiving an intervention, most domains were unaffected by having received a DTO and/or feedback. These results suggest that standardised feedback and a DTO integrated into attending rounds have limited potential to improve discharge summaries as currently designed. This study stresses the need for developing and refining interventions that can improve the narrative flow of discharge summaries.
Across the globe, the ways in which patients' tes... more Across the globe, the ways in which patients' test results are managed are as varied as the many different types of healthcare systems that manage these data. The outcomes, however, are often not too dissimilar: too many clinically significant test results fall through the cracks. The consequences of not following up test results in a timely manner are serious and often devastating to patients: diagnoses are delayed, treatments are not initiated or altered in time, and diseases progress. In resource-poor settings, test results too commonly get filed away within the paper chart in ways that isolate them and prevent passage to future providers caring for a patient. To make matters worse, the onus to act upon these test results often rests on patients who need to return to the clinic within a specified timeframe in order to obtain their results but who may not have the means or are too ill to do so. Even in more developed healthcare settings that use electronic records, clinical data residing in the electronic medical record (EMR) are often stubbornly "static"-key pieces of clinical information are frequently not recognized, retrieved, or shared easily. In this way, EMRs are not unlike paper record systems, and therefore, EMRs alone will not solve this problem. To illustrate this problem, consider the case of a patient newly diagnosed with HIV in 3 different healthcare delivery settings.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2014
Physician awareness of the results of tests pending at discharge (TPADs) is poor. We developed an... more Physician awareness of the results of tests pending at discharge (TPADs) is poor. We developed an automated system that notifies responsible physicians of TPAD results via secure, network email. We sought to evaluate the impact of this system on self-reported awareness of TPAD results by responsible physicians, a necessary intermediary step to improve management of TPAD results. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial at a major hospital affiliated with an integrated healthcare delivery network in Boston, Massachusetts. Adult patients with TPADs who were discharged from inpatient general medicine and cardiology services were assigned to the intervention or usual care arm if their inpatient attending physician and primary care physician (PCP) were both randomized to the same study arm. Patients of physicians randomized to discordant study arms were excluded. We surveyed these physicians 72 h after all TPAD results were finalized. The primary outcome was awareness of TPAD results by attending physicians. Secondary outcomes included awareness of TPAD results by PCPs, awareness of actionable TPAD results, and provider satisfaction. We analyzed data on 441 patients. We sent 441 surveys to attending physicians and 353 surveys to PCPs and received 275 and 152 responses from 83 different attending physicians and 112 different PCPs, respectively (attending physician survey response rate of 63%). Intervention attending physicians and PCPs were significantly more aware of TPAD results (76% vs 38%, adjusted/clustered OR 6.30 (95% CI 3.02 to 13.16), p<0.001; 57% vs 33%, adjusted/clustered OR 3.08 (95% CI 1.43 to 6.66), p=0.004, respectively). Intervention attending physicians tended to be more aware of actionable TPAD results (59% vs 29%, adjusted/clustered OR 4.25 (0.65, 27.85), p=0.13). One hundred and eighteen (85%) and 43 (63%) intervention attending physician and PCP survey respondents, respectively, were satisfied with this intervention. Automated email notification represents a promising strategy for managing TPAD results, potentially mitigating an unresolved patient safety concern. ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01153451).
Miscommunications are a leading cause of serious medical errors. Data from multicenter studies as... more Miscommunications are a leading cause of serious medical errors. Data from multicenter studies assessing programs designed to improve handoff of information about patient care are lacking. We conducted a prospective intervention study of a resident handoff-improvement program in nine hospitals, measuring rates of medical errors, preventable adverse events, and miscommunications, as well as resident workflow. The intervention included a mnemonic to standardize oral and written handoffs, handoff and communication training, a faculty development and observation program, and a sustainability campaign. Error rates were measured through active surveillance. Handoffs were assessed by means of evaluation of printed handoff documents and audio recordings. Workflow was assessed through time-motion observations. The primary outcome had two components: medical errors and preventable adverse events. In 10,740 patient admissions, the medical-error rate decreased by 23% from the preintervention period to the postintervention period (24.5 vs. 18.8 per 100 admissions, P<0.001), and the rate of preventable adverse events decreased by 30% (4.7 vs. 3.3 events per 100 admissions, P<0.001). The rate of nonpreventable adverse events did not change significantly (3.0 and 2.8 events per 100 admissions, P=0.79). Site-level analyses showed significant error reductions at six of nine sites. Across sites, significant increases were observed in the inclusion of all prespecified key elements in written documents and oral communication during handoff (nine written and five oral elements; P<0.001 for all 14 comparisons). There were no significant changes from the preintervention period to the postintervention period in the duration of oral handoffs (2.4 and 2.5 minutes per patient, respectively; P=0.55) or in resident workflow, including patient-family contact and computer time. Implementation of the handoff program was associated with reductions in medical errors and in preventable adverse events and with improvements in communication, without a negative effect on workflow. (Funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and others.).
Optimal critical test result communication is a Joint Commission national patient safety goal and... more Optimal critical test result communication is a Joint Commission national patient safety goal and requires documentation of closed-loop communication among care providers in the medical record. Electronic alert notification systems can facilitate an auditable process for creating alerts for transmission and acknowledgement of critical test results. We evaluated the impact of a patient safety initiative with an alert notification system on reducing critical results lacking documented communication, and assessed potential overuse of the alerting system for communicating results. We implemented an alert notification system-Alert Notification of Critical Results (ANCR)-in January 2010. We reviewed radiology reports finalised in 2009-2014 which lacked documented communication between the radiologist and another care provider, and assessed the impact of ANCR on the proportion of such reports with critical findings, using trend analysis over 10 semiannual time periods. To evaluate potentia...
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Jan 2, 2015
To assess whether integrating critical result management software-Alert Notification of Critical ... more To assess whether integrating critical result management software-Alert Notification of Critical Results (ANCR)-with an electronic health record (EHR)-based results management application impacts closed-loop communication and follow-up of nonurgent, clinically significant radiology results by primary care providers (PCPs). This institutional review board-approved study was conducted at a large academic medical center. Postintervention, PCPs could acknowledge nonurgent, clinically significant ANCR-generated alerts ("alerts") within ANCR or the EHR. Primary outcome was the proportion of alerts acknowledged via EHR over a 24-month postintervention. Chart abstractions for a random sample of alerts 12 months preintervention and 24 months postintervention were reviewed, and the follow-up rate of actionable alerts (eg, performing follow-up imaging, administering antibiotics) was estimated. Pre- and postintervention rates were compared using the Fisher exact test. Postintervention...
Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is essential for high quality care in the critical and a... more Patient- and Family-Centered Care (PFCC) is essential for high quality care in the critical and acute-specialty care hospital setting. Effective PFCC requires clinicians to form an integrated interprofessional team to collaboratively engage with the patient/family and contribute to a shared patient-centered plan of care. We conducted observations on a critical care and specialty unit to understand the plan of care activities and workflow documentation requirements for nurses and physicians to inform the development of a shared patient-centered plan of care to support patient engagement. We identified siloed plan of care documentation, with workflow opportunities to converge the nurses plan of care with the physician planned To-do lists and quality and safety checklists. Integration of nurses and physicians plan of care activities into a shared plan of care is a feasible and valuable step toward interprofessional teams that effectively engage patients in plan of care activities.
Patient engagement has been identified as a key strategy for improving patient outcomes. In this ... more Patient engagement has been identified as a key strategy for improving patient outcomes. In this paper, we describe the development and pilot testing of a web-based patient centered toolkit (PCTK) prototype to improve access to health information and to engage hospitalized patients and caregivers in the plan of care. Individual and group interviews were used to identify plan of care functional and workflow requirements and user interface design enhancements. Qualitative methods within a participatory design approach supported the development of a PCTK prototype that will be implemented on intensive care and oncology units to engage patients and professional care team members developing their plan of care during an acute hospitalization.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Jan 21, 2015
Failure to follow-up nonurgent, clinically significant test results (CSTRs) is an ambulatory pati... more Failure to follow-up nonurgent, clinically significant test results (CSTRs) is an ambulatory patient safety concern. Tools within electronic health records (EHRs) may facilitate test result acknowledgment, but their utility with regard to nonurgent CSTRs is unclear. We measured use of an acknowledgment tool by 146 primary care physicians (PCPs) at 13 network-affiliated practices that use the same EHR. We then surveyed PCPs to assess use of, satisfaction with, and desired enhancements to the acknowledgment tool. The rate of acknowledgment of non-urgent CSTRs by PCPs was 78%. Of 73 survey respondents, 72 reported taking one or more actions after reviewing a CSTR; fewer (40-75%) reported that using the acknowledgment tool was helpful for a specific purpose. Forty-six (64%) were satisfied with the tool. Both satisfied and nonsatisfied PCPs reported that enhancements linking acknowledgment to routine actions would be useful. EHR vendors should consider enhancements to acknowledgment func...
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of mortality in dialysis patients. Pulse wave ana... more Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the major cause of mortality in dialysis patients. Pulse wave analysis (PWA) of the radial artery provides a non-invasive measure of small (C2) vessel compliance which may predict future CVD. Decreased small vessel compliance in particular has been ...
High-quality discharge summaries are a key component of a safe transition in care. The purpose of... more High-quality discharge summaries are a key component of a safe transition in care. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of standardised feedback and a 'discharge time-out' (DTO) on the quality of discharge summaries. During 2006-2007, the authors trained hospitalists to provide two interventions at their discretion: (1) feedback on one discharge summary to each intern using a standardised form and (2) a DTO, modelled after the surgical time-out, in which key questions about the patient's hospital course and discharge plan are answered verbally by the intern during rounds on the day of discharge. To evaluate these interventions, trained clinicians, blinded to group assignment, performed an explicit review of two discharge summaries before and after intervention implementation. The authors used a mixed linear model to evaluate relative improvement over time. The authors compared 14 interns who only received a 1-h lecture and a small-group resident-led training session with 13 interns who also received feedback and 12 interns who received feedback and a DTO. Save greater improvement in the documentation of tasks to be completed after discharge (39% vs 8% absolute improvement, p=0.05) by interns receiving an intervention, most domains were unaffected by having received a DTO and/or feedback. These results suggest that standardised feedback and a DTO integrated into attending rounds have limited potential to improve discharge summaries as currently designed. This study stresses the need for developing and refining interventions that can improve the narrative flow of discharge summaries.
Across the globe, the ways in which patients' tes... more Across the globe, the ways in which patients' test results are managed are as varied as the many different types of healthcare systems that manage these data. The outcomes, however, are often not too dissimilar: too many clinically significant test results fall through the cracks. The consequences of not following up test results in a timely manner are serious and often devastating to patients: diagnoses are delayed, treatments are not initiated or altered in time, and diseases progress. In resource-poor settings, test results too commonly get filed away within the paper chart in ways that isolate them and prevent passage to future providers caring for a patient. To make matters worse, the onus to act upon these test results often rests on patients who need to return to the clinic within a specified timeframe in order to obtain their results but who may not have the means or are too ill to do so. Even in more developed healthcare settings that use electronic records, clinical data residing in the electronic medical record (EMR) are often stubbornly "static"-key pieces of clinical information are frequently not recognized, retrieved, or shared easily. In this way, EMRs are not unlike paper record systems, and therefore, EMRs alone will not solve this problem. To illustrate this problem, consider the case of a patient newly diagnosed with HIV in 3 different healthcare delivery settings.
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2014
Physician awareness of the results of tests pending at discharge (TPADs) is poor. We developed an... more Physician awareness of the results of tests pending at discharge (TPADs) is poor. We developed an automated system that notifies responsible physicians of TPAD results via secure, network email. We sought to evaluate the impact of this system on self-reported awareness of TPAD results by responsible physicians, a necessary intermediary step to improve management of TPAD results. We conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial at a major hospital affiliated with an integrated healthcare delivery network in Boston, Massachusetts. Adult patients with TPADs who were discharged from inpatient general medicine and cardiology services were assigned to the intervention or usual care arm if their inpatient attending physician and primary care physician (PCP) were both randomized to the same study arm. Patients of physicians randomized to discordant study arms were excluded. We surveyed these physicians 72 h after all TPAD results were finalized. The primary outcome was awareness of TPAD results by attending physicians. Secondary outcomes included awareness of TPAD results by PCPs, awareness of actionable TPAD results, and provider satisfaction. We analyzed data on 441 patients. We sent 441 surveys to attending physicians and 353 surveys to PCPs and received 275 and 152 responses from 83 different attending physicians and 112 different PCPs, respectively (attending physician survey response rate of 63%). Intervention attending physicians and PCPs were significantly more aware of TPAD results (76% vs 38%, adjusted/clustered OR 6.30 (95% CI 3.02 to 13.16), p<0.001; 57% vs 33%, adjusted/clustered OR 3.08 (95% CI 1.43 to 6.66), p=0.004, respectively). Intervention attending physicians tended to be more aware of actionable TPAD results (59% vs 29%, adjusted/clustered OR 4.25 (0.65, 27.85), p=0.13). One hundred and eighteen (85%) and 43 (63%) intervention attending physician and PCP survey respondents, respectively, were satisfied with this intervention. Automated email notification represents a promising strategy for managing TPAD results, potentially mitigating an unresolved patient safety concern. ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01153451).
Miscommunications are a leading cause of serious medical errors. Data from multicenter studies as... more Miscommunications are a leading cause of serious medical errors. Data from multicenter studies assessing programs designed to improve handoff of information about patient care are lacking. We conducted a prospective intervention study of a resident handoff-improvement program in nine hospitals, measuring rates of medical errors, preventable adverse events, and miscommunications, as well as resident workflow. The intervention included a mnemonic to standardize oral and written handoffs, handoff and communication training, a faculty development and observation program, and a sustainability campaign. Error rates were measured through active surveillance. Handoffs were assessed by means of evaluation of printed handoff documents and audio recordings. Workflow was assessed through time-motion observations. The primary outcome had two components: medical errors and preventable adverse events. In 10,740 patient admissions, the medical-error rate decreased by 23% from the preintervention period to the postintervention period (24.5 vs. 18.8 per 100 admissions, P<0.001), and the rate of preventable adverse events decreased by 30% (4.7 vs. 3.3 events per 100 admissions, P<0.001). The rate of nonpreventable adverse events did not change significantly (3.0 and 2.8 events per 100 admissions, P=0.79). Site-level analyses showed significant error reductions at six of nine sites. Across sites, significant increases were observed in the inclusion of all prespecified key elements in written documents and oral communication during handoff (nine written and five oral elements; P<0.001 for all 14 comparisons). There were no significant changes from the preintervention period to the postintervention period in the duration of oral handoffs (2.4 and 2.5 minutes per patient, respectively; P=0.55) or in resident workflow, including patient-family contact and computer time. Implementation of the handoff program was associated with reductions in medical errors and in preventable adverse events and with improvements in communication, without a negative effect on workflow. (Funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and others.).
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