Provider and patient satisfaction with the integration of ambulatory and hospital EHR systems.

Objective: The installation of EHR systems can disrupt operations at clinical practice sites, but also lead to improvements in information availability. We examined how the installation of an ambulatory EHR at OB/GYN practices and its subsequent interface with an inpatient perinatal EHR affected providers' satisfaction with the transmission of clinical information and patients' ratings of their care experience.

Methods: We collected data on provider satisfaction through 4 survey rounds during the phased implementation of the EHR.

A mixed methods study of clinical information availability in obstetric triage and prenatal offices.

Objective: To determine the effect of availability of clinical information from an integrated electronic health record system on pregnancy outcomes at the point of care.

Materials And Methods: We used provider interviews and surveys to evaluate the availability of pregnancy-related clinical information in ambulatory practices and the hospital, and applied multiple regression to determine whether greater clinical information availability is associated with improvements in pregnancy outcomes and changes in care processes. Our regression models are risk adjusted and include physician fixed effects to control for unobservable characteristics of physicians that are constant across patients and time.

Integrating commercial ambulatory electronic health records with hospital systems: An evolutionary process.

Objective: The increase in electronic health record implementation in all treatment venues has led to greater demands for integration within and across practice settings with different work cultures. We study the evolution of coordination processes when integrating ambulatory-specific electronic health records with hospital systems.

Materials And Methods: Longitudinal qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and archival documentation throughout a 5-year implementation and integration of obstetrical ambulatory and hospital records with a goal of achieving a perinatal continuum of care.

"Reducing unnecessary testing in a CPOE system through implementation of a targeted CDS intervention".

Background: We describe and evaluate the development and use of a Clinical Decision Support (CDS) intervention; an alert, in response to an identified medical error of overuse of a diagnostic laboratory test in a Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system. CPOE with embedded CDS has been shown to improve quality of care and reduce medical errors. CPOE can also improve resource utilization through more appropriate use of laboratory tests and diagnostic studies.

Differential diagnosis generators: an evaluation of currently available computer programs.

Background: Differential diagnosis (DDX) generators are computer programs that generate a DDX based on various clinical data.

Objective: We identified evaluation criteria through consensus, applied these criteria to describe the features of DDX generators, and tested performance using cases from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM©) and the Medical Knowledge Self Assessment Program (MKSAP©).

Methods: We first identified evaluation criteria by consensus.

Physician buy-in for EMRs.

Implementing an EMR in an ambulatory practice requires intense workflow analysis, introduction of new technologies and significant cultural change for the physicians and physician champion. This paper will relate the experience at Lehigh Valley Health Network in the implementation of an ambulatory EMR and with the physician champions that were selected to assist the effort. The choice of a physician champion involves political considerations, variation in leadership and communication styles, and a cornucopia of personalities.

You've led the horse to water, now how do you get him to drink: managing change and increasing utilization of computerized provider order entry.

Community hospitals served by predominately private-practice physicians face difficult challenges in implementing computerized provider order entry (CPOE), but there are techniques and incentives that can be employed to change physician behavior Various techniques were used to increase CPOE utilization at Lehigh Valley Hospital, a three-campus, 750-bed tertiary community hospital in eastern Pennsylvania. Those techniques included presenting studies supporting CPOE as a way to improve patient care, recognizing support with small trinkets, providing individual access to computers, adding clinical decision support, and bringing peer pressure to bear Ultimately, financial compensation for the educational time required to learn to use and become proficient with the system was employed and had the greatest impact on behavior Measuring utilization of the CPOE system with data extracted from the hospital's clinical information system, CPOE utilization by physicians increased to 57 percent from 35 percent after a financial compensation program was initiated. Utilization declined to 42 percent several months after completing the first phase of the program and increased to 54 percent after a second phase was initiated.

CPOE is much more than computers.

A prominent hospital in Pennsylvania turned to CPOE to help reduce medical errors and improve patient care. Learn what steps hospital officials took to establish a successful CPOE system.