Improving Electronic Patient Handoff in an Orthopaedic Residency using the Listrunner Application.

Introduction: Miscommunication during shift change and other handoff events is a common source of malpractice claims and patient-care errors. An efficient patient handoff system is imperative to prevent miscommunication. Owning to limitations with our current handoff system and to an ever-increasing reliance on electronic health information, our residency program sought to modernize our handoff method.

Methods: To improve handoff communication, the HIPAA-compliant application Listrunner was adopted. Members of the orthopaedic trauma team were oriented to the new application. Change-of-shift patient handoff was transitioned from the current email system to List-runner. After three months of using the new application, a web-based questionnaire was administered to all members of the care team to assess their experiences, including perceived benefits and limitations of the Listrunner application.

Results: Seventeen orthopaedic resident physicians and three orthopaedic trauma attending physicians completed the survey. While almost half of the respondents were satisfied using email as a checkout tool, more than half of study participants indicated that it lacked security and several users believed there was a need for improvement. Most indicated that Listrunner was easy to use, improved clinical efficiency, and improved patient care and safety. Seventeen of 20 respondents reported that they would like to continue using Listrunner as a check-out tool.

Conclusions: The Listrunner application was adopted quickly by our orthopaedic trauma team, whose members opined that the application increased the efficiency and accuracy of handoff when compared to the previous secure email system.