Here’s a lovely example of our Physician Informatics Group (Large PIG) evolving as we improve the “intelligence” that our Electronic Health Record (EHR) supplies to our hardworking providers (physicians and advanced practice providers).
In the past
clinicians might have pulled up an app on their smartphone dedicated to the ASCVD: atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease RISK CALCULATOR, punch in some numbers and get a result to type back into the EHR.
Later on, some well known national websites would do the calculation for you. Still requires finding the website and typing in numbers.
Even later, we would put hyperlinks within the EHR to link you automatically, but the typing was still required to get an answer.
NOW
we have built a smartphrase (while using the EHR, in any text field, type “.ASCVDRISK”, hit the RETURN key, and Voila, the answer above:
Risk calculated based on what the EHR knows about your patient: age, sex, diabetes, smoking, blood pressure, cholesterol. AND THE ANSWER: 9.1%. FURTHERMORE, disappearing help text guides you to use this information appropriately, and only saves the relevant info to keep in your progress note.
My colleague’s wonderful metaphor for Clinical Decision Support like this?
Put the road signs on the road, not in the garage.
It is already hard enough to use an EHR with patients. Don’t make me go looking for that training document from weeks or months ago, don’t make me think. Make it easy to do the right thing. It is a small celebration every time we can do this right.
CMIO’s take? Thanks to Rich Altman MD for a beautiful new tool in our system. What road signs can YOU take out of the garage and put on the road?
