[Acceleration of electrocardiogram processing during dispensarization].

More than 20% of approximately 35,000 patients filling a diuretic prescription had no potassium blood test recorded within the previous year. A laboratory reporting system used throughout Israel by Maccabi Healthcare Services physicians was modified to provide physician alerts regarding potassium testing. The physicians were experienced users of a computerized medical record (CMR) that provided online laboratory test results. A nightly batch file checked pharmacy diuretic purchases against the patient's potassium blood test status. On-screen computer-generated reminders were sent to physicians of patients lacking a recent potassium test. Reminders to clinicians increased potassium testing by 9.8% (p < 0.001). Physician age and gender played a small part in predicting compliance to the alert, but specialty and practice size did not. The time delay between the date a reminder was sent and the potassium test date decreased steadily during the intervention. The success of this reminder system encourages expansion to include more drug-laboratory interactions. Furthermore, direct alerts to patients at multiple organization/patient contact points are planned.

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PubMed2003

Systematic review of scope and quality of electronic patient record data in primary care.

OBJECTIVE: To systematically review measures of data quality in electronic patient records (EPRs) in primary care. DESIGN: Systematic review of English language publications, 1980-2001. DATA SOURCES: Bibliographic searches of medical databases, specialist medical informatics databases, conference proceedings, and institutional contacts. STUDY SELECTION: Studies selected according to a predefined framework for categorising review papers. DATA EXTRACTION: Reference standards and measurements used to judge quality. RESULTS: Bibliographic searches identified 4589 publications. After primary exclusions 174 articles were classified, 52 of which met the inclusion criteria for review. Selected studies were primarily descriptive surveys. Variability in methods prevented meta-analysis of results. Forty eight publications were concerned with diagnostic data, 37 studies measured data quality, and 15 scoped EPR quality. Reliability of data was assessed with rate comparison. Measures of sensitivity were highly dependent on the element of EPR data being investigated, while the positive predictive value was consistently high, indicating good validity. Prescribing data were generally of better quality than diagnostic or lifestyle data. CONCLUSION: The lack of standardised methods for assessment of quality of data in electronic patient records makes it difficult to compare results between studies. Studies should present data quality measures with clear numerators, denominators, and confidence intervals. Ambiguous terms such as "accuracy" should be avoided unless precisely defined.

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