Integration of physical abuse clinical decision support at 2 general emergency departments

Publication Date

2019

Journal Title

J Am Med Inform Assoc

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com. OBJECTIVE: The study sought to develop and evaluate an electronic health record-based child abuse clinical decision support system in 2 general emergency departments. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A combination of a child abuse screen, natural language processing, physician orders, and discharge diagnoses were used to identify children system, 86 during the preintervention and 156 during the intervention. The number of children identified with suspicious injuries increased 4-fold during the intervention (P < .001). Compliance was 70% (7 of 10) in the preintervention period vs 50% (22 of 44) in the intervention, a change that was not statistically different (P = .55). Fifty-two percent of providers said that receiving the alert changed their clinical decision making. There was no relationship between compliance and provider or patient demographics. CONCLUSIONS: A multifaceted child abuse clinical decision support system resulted in a marked increase in the number of young children identified as having injuries suspicious for physical abuse in 2 general emergency departments. Compliance with published guidelines did not change; we hypothesize that this is related to the increased number of children identified with suspicious, but less serious injuries. These injuries were likely missed preintervention. Tracking compliance with guidelines over time will be important to assess whether compliance increases as physician comfort with evaluation of suspected physical abuse in young children improves.

Volume Number

26

Issue Number

10

Pages

1020 - 1029

Document Type

Article

Status

Faculty

Facility

School of Medicine

Primary Department

General Internal Medicine

PMID

31197358

DOI

10.1093/jamia/ocz069

Comments

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