3-Sarah Rosetti

Introduction

  • Speaker and team acknowledgment.

  • Funding source: National Institute for Nursing Research and American Nurses Foundation.

  • Multisite collaboration: Columbia, Mass General Brigham, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis.

Clinical Patient Safety Problem

  • Preventable inpatient deaths in hospitals are a major concern:

    • Estimated 200,000 cardiac arrest deaths annually in hospitals.

    • Estimated 130,000 sepsis-related deaths could be prevented.

  • Critical need for improved patient outcomes in hospitalization.

  • Nurses play a key role in detecting subtle signs of patient deterioration.

Nursing Documentation Contribution

  • Nurses increase documentation in response to patient concerns.

  • Documentation patterns provide insights into at-risk patient states.

  • Differences in perception of patient stability between nurses and physicians.

    • Physicians rely on physiological signs from EHR while nurses may detect early warning signs.

  • Communication barriers exist between nursing and medical staff regarding patient status.

Importance of Interdisciplinary Communication

  • Nurses' observations lead to increased surveillance and communication with physicians.

  • Challenges arise when physicians are not present to observe patient changes directly.

  • Effective communication among care teams is essential to avoid missed signals that indicate patient risk.

EHR Data Utilization

  • Analysis of flow sheet data from nursing documentation.

  • Importance of recognizing patterns of documentation beyond just values of vital signs.

    • Example: Comments made by nurses in EHR clarify patient context and significance of data.

  • Metadata analysis is crucial for understanding clinician documentation patterns.

Concern Study Objectives

  • Three aims for the Concern study:

    1. Analyze nursing documentation patterns to determine notification thresholds for at-risk patients.

    2. Develop and integrate a smart app notification system for risky patient states.

    3. Evaluate the impact of the concerned smart app on patient outcomes (mortality, length of stay, etc.).

EHR Data Types and Challenges

  • Key data types collected for analysis:

    • Patient demographics, encounter information, flow sheet data, medication administration records, laboratory data, etc.

  • Data harmonization challenges between different EHR systems (e.g., Allscripts vs. Epic).

  • Need for structured and standardized data for optimal analysis and insights.

Health Care Process Modeling

  • The significance of understanding clinician behaviors through documentation patterns.

  • Expert knowledge in nursing contributes to improved predictive modeling for patient deterioration.

    • Certain behaviors (e.g., increased documentation frequency) may indicate worsening patient conditions.

  • Health care process modeling aims to capture and quantify these behaviors.

Predictive Modeling Approach

  • Utilization of machine learning for prediction of adverse patient outcomes.

  • Focus on capturing early warning signals through enhanced data points from EHR.

  • Importance of temporal dynamics in modeling (e.g., time of day, length of stay).

Early Warning System Development

  • Need for systems that predict deterioration based on nursing observations rather than solely physiological signs.

  • Early intervention capabilities enhanced by predictive modeling leading to better patient outcomes.

Interdisciplinary Focus Groups

  • Engaged nursing and physician input to inform the development of predictive models.

  • Importance of ensuring usability of predictive tools in clinical practice.

Concern Smart App Implementation

  • Presenting the smart app within the existing EHR workflow.

  • Alerts designed to minimize alert fatigue and focus on actionable patient risks (red, yellow, green scoring).

  • Continuous training and outreach to ensure clinician awareness and usage of the smart app.

Conclusion

  • Demonstrated the capability of using nursing documentation patterns as a predictor of patient deterioration.

  • Encouragement of further research into metadata and nursing insights.

  • Emphasized the necessity of clinician collaboration in modeling healthcare data effectively.