Automation of a despised task
Clay Smith
Waiting for the inpatient team to call back is universally despised. What if this communication could happen asynchronously? An electronic method for signing out a patient to medicine using information pulled from the medical record, with the option to communicate verbally as needed, was rapidly adopted in this single center. They found a reduction in time to inpatient order completion and no significant change in the number of patients transferred to the ICU (a surrogate marker of the safety of this new process).
Spoon Feed
Electronic, asynchronous sign-out to the admitting team was widely used, reduced time to admission order completion, and seemed to be safe in this single center retrospective study.
From cited article
Source
A Model for Electronic Handoff Between the Emergency Department and Inpatient Units. J Emerg Med. 2017 May 12. pii: S0736-4679(17)30317-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jemermed.2017.03.027. [Epub ahead of print]
Peer Reviewed by Thomas Davis.
