Category: Informatics

This is a mildly entertaining ethnographic study of how ED physicians, IM physicians, and surgeons used the Electronic Health Record (EHR) in the context of patient care in a tertiary medical center.

Essentially, the authors observed and interviewed residents and attendings in their use of the EHR, and identified its use in a function termed “chart biopsy” during the admission handoff process.  Inpatient teams were observed using the EHR to get a quick overview of the patient prior to the handoff, to provide the foundation for the history & physical, and – most entertainingly – to use as a weapon in negotiation and “blocking” potential admissions with ED physicians.  Other amusing anecdotes include the authors’ characterization of inpatient physicians feeling “less ‘at the mercy’ of ED physicians” after doing a pre-handoff chart biopsy, or feeling as though they could guard against the “disorganized ramblings” off the handoff process.

Overall, the authors correctly identify EHRs as increasingly prevalent supplements to traditional information gathering techniques, and make a reasonable proposal for evolution in EHRs to aid the “chart biopsy” process.

“Chart biopsy: an emerging medical practice enabled by electronic health records and its impacts on emergency department-inpatient admission handoffs.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22962194

672.

Or, at least, that’s how many self-identified in their Twitter profiles as professional physicians in Emergency Medicine at the time this descriptive study was undertaken.  According to the author estimates, this accounts for ~1.6% of the ~20,000 U.S. board-certified Emergency Physicians.  The true number may be higher, owing to profiles that do not identify themselves professionally.

About half were “active” with a tweet within the last 15 days, and the other half were “inactive”.  Active accounts followed more users and were followed by more users.  They also have a visualization figure showing the interconnectedness of the active Twitter accounts, and, unsurprisingly, everyone tweets to the same group of twits, and vice versa.

So, it’s a small social media extension of the greater online presence of Emergency Physicians.  I’d probably say that the primary flaw with the service, regarding promoting wider interaction between online EPs, is that it is a closed, self-contained system separate from the other online resources visited by EPs.  The value is probably most to those who communicate and interact professionally in an active manner, whereas it doesn’t have as much to offer the passive observer.

“Analysis of emergency physicians’ Twitter accounts”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22634832

Recently, there has been a great deal of coverage on internet news sites with headlines such as “Study: iPads Increase Residency Efficency.”  These headlines are pulled from a “Research Letter” in Archives of Internal Medicine, reporting from the University of Chicago, regarding the distribution of iPads capable of running Epic via Citrix.

Sounds good, but it’s untrue.

What is true is that residents reported that they used the iPads for work.  The additionally thought that it saved them time, and thought it improved their efficiency on the wards.  This is to say, they liked using the iPad.

The part that isn’t true is where the authors claim an increase in “actual resident efficiency.”  By analyzing the hour of the day in which orders are placed, the authors attempt to extrapolate to a hypothetical reality in which this means iPads are helping their residents place orders more quickly on admitted patients, and to place additional orders while post-call, just before leaving the hospital.  There is, in fact, no specific data that using the iPad makes the residents more efficient, only data showing the hour of the day in which orders are placed has changed from one year to the next.  The iPad has, perhaps, changed their work habits – but without prospectively observing how these iPads are being used, it is impossible to conclude how or why.

But, at least they liked them!  And, considering how addictive Angry Birds is, I’m surprised their productivity isn’t decreased.

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/172/5/436

This is a nice informatics paper that deals mostly with problem lists.  These are meticulously maintained (in theory) by inpatient and ambulatory physicians to accurately reflect a patient’s current medical issues.  Then, when they arrive in the ED, you do your quick chart biopsy from the EMR, and you can rapidly learn about your patient.  However, these lists are invariably inaccurate – studies show they’ll appropriately be updated with breast cancer 78% of the time, but as low as 4% of the time for renal insufficiency.  This is bad because, supposedly, accurate problem lists lead to higher-quality care – more CHF patients receiving ACE or ARBs if it was on their diagnosis list, etc.

These authors created a natural language processing engine, as well as a set of inference rules based on medications, lab results, and billing codes for 17 diagnoses, and implemented an alert prompt to encourage clinicians to update the problem list as necessary.  Overall, 17,043 alerts were fired during the study period, and clinicians accepted the recommendations of 41% – which could be better, but it’s really quite good for an alert.  As you might expect, the study group with the alerts generated 3 times greater additions to the patient problem lists.  These authors think this is a good thing – although, I have seen some incredible problem list bloat.

What’s interesting is that a follow-up audit of alerts to evaluate their accuracy based on clinical reading of the patient’s chart estimated the alerts were 91% accurate – which means all those ignored alerts were actually mostly correct.  So, there’s clearly still a lot of important work that needs to go into finding better ways to integrate this sort of clinical feedback into the workflow.

So, in theory, better problem lists, better outcomes.  However, updating your wife’s problem list can probably wait until after Valentine’s Day.

“Improving completeness of electronic problem lists through clinical decision support: a randomized, controlled trial.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22215056

It’s not a terribly profound paper – along the lines of “we did this and we liked it” sort of thing – but it is a relevant educational application of wikis in medicine.

The BIDMC Internal Medicine department undertook an initiative to essentially convert all their little handbooks and service guides to an online reference.  They chose the wiki interface so anyone could update information or add pages while allowing updates to be tracked and rolled back as necessary.  They promoted it during their intern orientation and made a significant effort both to get people to update it and use it.  And, for the most part, they were successful.  Most residents (92%) thought it was useful, it was mostly used to find phone numbers and rotation specific clinical information, and, overall, about half of the PGY-2 and -3s updated the site during the 2009-10 year.

It probably takes a lot of effort and requires just the right collaborative environment, but there are a lot of residencies, departments, or other clinical organizations that could also probably benefit from something similar – particularly if there are a lot of rotating students/residence between difference services or sites.

“Adoption of a wiki within a large internal medicine residency program: a 3-year experience”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22140210