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Notifications of hospital events to outpatient clinicians using health information exchange: a post-implementation survey

2013; British Computer Society; Volume: 20; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.14236/jhi.v20i4.14

2058-4563

R. Scott Altman, Jason S. Shapiro, Thomas A. Moore, Gilad J. Kuperman,

Patient Satisfaction in Healthcare

The trend towards hospitalist medicine can lead to disjointed patient care. Outpatient clinicians may be unaware of patients' encounters with a disparate healthcare system. Electronic notifications to outpatient clinicians of patients' emergency department (ED) visits and inpatient admissions and discharges using health information exchange can inform outpatient clinicians of patients' hospital-based events.Assess outpatient clinicians' impressions of a new, secure messaging-based, patient event notification system.Twenty outpatient clinicians receiving notifications of hospital-based events were recruited and 14 agreed to participate. Using a semi-structured interview, clinicians were asked about their use of notifications and the impact on their practices.Nine of 14 interviewed clinicians (64%) thought that without notifications, they would have heard about fewer than 10% of ED visits before the patient's next visit. Nine clinicians (64%) thought that without notifications, they would have heard about fewer than 25% of inpatient admissions and discharges before the patient's next visit. Six clinicians (43%) reported that they call the inpatient team more often because of notifications. Eight users (57%) thought that notifications improved patient safety by increasing their awareness of the patients' clinical events and their medication changes. Key themes identified were the importance of workflow integration and a desire for more clinical information in notifications.The notification system is perceived by clinicians to be of value. These findings should instigate further message-oriented use of health information exchange and point to refinements that can lead to even greater benefits.