Detecting alerts, notifying the physician, and offering action items: a comprehensive alerting system

• HIT Description: Decision support system with computerized clinical alert. More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: Evaluate an alert system to automatically identify, notify, and advice physicians of serious clinical conditions in inpatients.
  
• Years of study: 1995-1996
  
• Study Design: Cross-sectional
  
• Outcomes: Impact on patient safety, Impact on health care effectivness/quality
  

• Settings: Medical and surgical housestaff participated in this study, which took place in a tertiary-care hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Intervention: Computerized clinical alert that notifies the patient's covering physician via his pager that an alert is present and offers potential therapies for the patient's condition (action items) at the time he views the alert information.
• Evaluation Method: Measure of physicians response and action to alerts.
• Description: The Brigham Integrated Computer System provides results reporting, inpatient physician computerized order entry; and a patient-provider coverage list application.
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: Over a 6 month period, physicians responded to 1214 (70.2%) of 1730 alerts for which they were paged; they responded to 1002 (82.5% of the 1214) in less than 15 minutes. They said they would take action in 71.5% of the alerts, and they placed an order directly from the alert display screen in 39.4%.