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Improving Blood Transfusion Practices in a Community Hospital Setting: Our Experience with Real-Time Clinical Decision Support.

ABSTRACT: There is good evidence that 50% or more of red blood cell (RBC) transfusions are unnecessary. To curtail inappropriate RBC transfusions at our hospital, real-time clinical decision support was implemented in our electronic medical record (EMR) that alerts clinicians to the patient's most recent pretransfusion hemoglobin value upon order entry and provides Best Practice Advisory. This is a soft pop-up alert which is activated when the hemoglobin exceeds 7 g/dL. The ordering clinician can either honor (by cancelling the order) or override the alert. We studied the impact of the alert on blood utilization during a 3-month period (November 2016 to January 2017). For patients who were transfused despite the alert, a retrospective review of the medical chart was performed to determine whether or not the transfusion was clinically indicated. During the study period, 178 of the 895 RBC transfusion orders (20%) triggered the alert. After excluding duplicates, 144 orders were included in our analysis. Most of these orders (124/144, 86%) were carried out despite the alert. According to our chart review, 48% of the alert transfusions could be considered inappropriate, with hemodynamically stable, asymptomatic anemia being the leading indication. Of clinical services, orthopedic surgery had the highest rate of overriding the alert with no clinical justification (70%). The number of RBC transfusions dropped from 313.5 units per month (preintervention period) to 293.2 units per month (postintervention period)-a 6.5% decrease. Real-time clinical decision support may reduce the number of inappropriate RBC transfusions in a community hospital setting, though in our study, the decrease in blood utilization (6.5%) did not reach statistical significance.

SUBMITTER: Sardar M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6164780 | biostudies-other | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Improving Blood Transfusion Practices in a Community Hospital Setting: Our Experience with Real-Time Clinical Decision Support.

Sardar Muhammad M Azharuddin Muhammad M Subedi Ananta A Ghatage Prateek P Du Doantarang D Szallasi Arpad A

Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) 20180822 3

There is good evidence that 50% or more of red blood cell (RBC) transfusions are unnecessary. To curtail inappropriate RBC transfusions at our hospital, real-time clinical decision support was implemented in our electronic medical record (EMR) that alerts clinicians to the patient's most recent pretransfusion hemoglobin value upon order entry and provides Best Practice Advisory. This is a soft pop-up alert which is activated when the hemoglobin exceeds 7 g/dL. The ordering clinician can either h ...[more]

PMID: 30135392

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Project description:BackgroundInappropriate prescribing is associated with negative patient outcomes. In hospitalized patients, the use of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs) may reduce inappropriate prescribing and thereby improve patient-related outcomes. However, recently published large clinical trials (OPERAM and SENATOR) have shown negative results on the use of CDSSs and patient outcomes and strikingly low acceptance of recommendations.ObjectiveThe purpose of the present study was to investigate the use of a CDSS in a real-life clinical setting of hospitalized older patients. As such, we report on the real-life pattern of this in-hospital implemented CDSS, including (i) whether generated alerts were resolved; (ii) whether a recorded action by the pharmacist led to an improved number of resolved alerts; and (iii) the natural course of generated alerts, in particular of those in the non-intervention group; as these data are largely lacking in current studies.MethodsHospitalized patients, aged 60 years and older, admitted to Zuyderland Medical Centre, the Netherlands, in 2018 were included. The evaluation of the CDSS was investigated using a database used for standard care. Alongside demographic and clinical data, we also collected the total numbers of CDSS alerts, the number of alerts 'handled' by the pharmacist, those that resulted in an action by the pharmacist, and finally the outcome of the alerts at day 1 and day 3 after the alert was generated.ResultsA total of 3574 unique hospitalized patients, mean age 76.7 (SD 8.3) years and 53% female, were included. From these patients, 8073 alerts were generated, of which 7907 (97.9% of total) were handled by the pharmacist (day 1). In 51.6% of the alerts handled by the pharmacist, an action was initiated, resulting in 36.1% of the alerts resolved after day 1, compared with 27.3% if the pharmacist did not perform an action (p < 0.001). On day 3, in 52.6% of the alerts an action by the pharmacist was initiated, resulting in 62.4% resolved alerts, compared with 48.0% when no action was performed (p < 0.001). In the category renal function, the percentages differed significantly between an action versus no action of the pharmacist at day 1 and at day 3 (16.6% vs 10.6%, p < 0.001 [day 1]; 29.8% vs 19.4%, p < 0.001 [day 3]).ConclusionThis study demonstrates the pattern and natural course of clinical alerts of an in-hospital implemented CDSS in a real-life clinical setting of hospitalized older patients. Besides the already known beneficial effect of actions by pharmacists, we have also shown that many alerts become resolved without any specific intervention. As such, our study provides an important insight into the spontaneous course of resolved alerts, since these data are currently lacking in the literature.

Project description:BACKGROUND:Inpatients are often prescribed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) without a shared decision-making process. Since implementation of decision aids into practice is highly sensitive to the clinical milieu, we performed a pilot study to refine our study procedures and to evaluate the acceptability and potential effectiveness of a shared decision-making intervention when implemented in a Canadian hospital setting. METHODS:In this before-after pilot study, we recruited patients and family members on the medical wards of 2 Canadian teaching hospitals between September 2015 and March 2017. The intervention consisted of viewing a CPR decision video and completing a values-clarification worksheet; follow-up discussion with the physician was encouraged. The primary feasibility outcome was acceptability of the video, and the primary effectiveness outcome was change in the Decisional Conflict Scale score (lower scores being more desirable) after the intervention. Participants rated the extent of shared decision-making using the CollaboRATE instrument. RESULTS:Of the 71 participants (43 patients with a mean age of 79.0 [standard deviation (SD) 11.4] yr and 28 family members with a mean age of 61.0 [SD 10.0] yr), 65 (92%) rated the CPR decision video as good to excellent. The intervention was associated with an improvement in knowledge about CPR (+2.7 points, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.2 to 3.3, effect size 1.5) and a reduction in the Decisional Conflict Scale score (-18.1 points, 95% CI -21.8 to -14.3, effect size 1.4). The 36 participants who had a discussion with a physician about CPR after watching the video rated the extent of shared decision-making as 6.3 (SD 1.7) (possible maximum score 9). There was a nonsignificant decrease in the proportion of patients with a medical order for CPR after the intervention (71% before v. 63% after, p = 0.06). INTERPRETATION:The CPR decision video was acceptable to patients and family members. Our decision-support intervention may improve knowledge, reduce decisional conflict and reduce the prevalence of medical orders for CPR in the Canadian hospital setting.

Project description:BackgroundUse of electronic clinical decision support (eCDS) has been recommended to improve implementation of clinical decision rules. Many eCDS tools, however, are designed and implemented without taking into account the context in which clinical work is performed. Implementation of the pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) clinical decision rule at one Level I pediatric emergency department includes an electronic questionnaire triggered when ordering a head computed tomography using computerized physician order entry (CPOE). Providers use this CPOE tool in less than 20% of trauma resuscitation cases. A human factors engineering approach could identify the implementation barriers that are limiting the use of this tool.ObjectivesThe objective was to design a pediatric TBI eCDS tool for trauma resuscitation using a human factors approach. The hypothesis was that clinical experts will rate a usability-enhanced eCDS tool better than the existing CPOE tool for user interface design and suitability for clinical use.MethodsThis mixed-methods study followed usability evaluation principles. Pediatric emergency physicians were surveyed to identify barriers to using the existing eCDS tool. Using standard trauma resuscitation protocols, a hierarchical task analysis of pediatric TBI evaluation was developed. Five clinical experts, all board-certified pediatric emergency medicine faculty members, then iteratively modified the hierarchical task analysis until reaching consensus. The software team developed a prototype eCDS display using the hierarchical task analysis. Three human factors engineers provided feedback on the prototype through a heuristic evaluation, and the software team refined the eCDS tool using a rapid prototyping process. The eCDS tool then underwent iterative usability evaluations by the five clinical experts using video review of 50 trauma resuscitation cases. A final eCDS tool was created based on their feedback, with content analysis of the evaluations performed to ensure all concerns were identified and addressed.ResultsAmong 26 EPs (76% response rate), the main barriers to using the existing tool were that the information displayed is redundant and does not fit clinical workflow. After the prototype eCDS tool was developed based on the trauma resuscitation hierarchical task analysis, the human factors engineers rated it to be better than the CPOE tool for nine of 10 standard user interface design heuristics on a three-point scale. The eCDS tool was also rated better for clinical use on the same scale, in 84% of 50 expert-video pairs, and was rated equivalent in the remainder. Clinical experts also rated barriers to use of the eCDS tool as being low.ConclusionsAn eCDS tool for diagnostic imaging designed using human factors engineering methods has improved perceived usability among pediatric emergency physicians.

Dataset Information

Improving Blood Transfusion Practices in a Community Hospital Setting: Our Experience with Real-Time Clinical Decision Support.

Publications

Improving Blood Transfusion Practices in a Community Hospital Setting: Our Experience with Real-Time Clinical Decision Support.

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