Provider Interaction With an Electronic Health Record Notification to Identify Eligible Patients for a Cluster Randomized Trial of Advance Care Planning in Primary Care: Secondary Analysis.

Abstract

Background

Advance care planning (ACP) improves patient-provider communication and aligns care to patient values, preferences, and goals. Within a multisite Meta-network Learning and Research Center ACP study, one health system deployed an electronic health record (EHR) notification and algorithm to alert providers about patients potentially appropriate for ACP and the clinical study.

Objective

The aim of the study is to describe the implementation and usage of an EHR notification for referring patients to an ACP study, evaluate the association of notifications with study referrals and engagement in ACP, and assess provider interactions with and perspectives on the notifications.

Methods

A secondary analysis assessed provider usage and their response to the notification (eg, acknowledge, dismiss, or engage patient in ACP conversation and refer patient to the clinical study). We evaluated all patients identified by the EHR algorithm during the Meta-network Learning and Research Center ACP study. Descriptive statistics compared patients referred to the study to those who were not referred to the study. Health care utilization, hospice referrals, and mortality as well as documentation and billing for ACP and related legal documents are reported. We evaluated associations between notifications with provider actions (ie, referral to study, ACP not documentation, and ACP billing). Provider free-text comments in the notifications were summarized qualitatively. Providers were surveyed on their satisfaction with the notification.

Results

Among the 2877 patients identified by the EHR algorithm over 20 months, 17,047 unique notifications were presented to 45 providers in 6 clinics, who then referred 290 (10%) patients. Providers had a median of 269 (IQR 65-552) total notifications, and patients had a median of 4 (IQR 2-8). Patients with more (over 5) notifications were less likely to be referred to the study than those with fewer notifications (57/1092, 5.2% vs 233/1785, 13.1%; P<.001). The most common free-text comment on the notification was lack of time. Providers who referred patients to the study were more likely to document ACP and submit ACP billing codes (P<.001). In the survey, 11 providers would recommend the notification (n=7, 64%); however, the notification impacted clinical workflow (n=9, 82%) and was difficult to navigate (n=6, 55%).

Conclusions

An EHR notification can be implemented to remind providers to both perform ACP conversations and refer patients to a clinical study. There were diminishing returns after the fifth EHR notification where additional notifications did not lead to more trial referrals, ACP documentation, or ACP billing. Creation and optimization of EHR notifications for study referrals and ACP should consider the provider user, their workflow, and alert fatigue to improve implementation and adoption.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03577002; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03577002.

Department

Description

Provenance

Citation

Published Version (Please cite this version)

10.2196/41884

Publication Info

Ma, Jessica E, Jared Lowe, Callie Berkowitz, Azalea Kim, Ira Togo, R Clayton Musser, Jonathan Fischer, Kevin Shah, et al. (2023). Provider Interaction With an Electronic Health Record Notification to Identify Eligible Patients for a Cluster Randomized Trial of Advance Care Planning in Primary Care: Secondary Analysis. Journal of medical Internet research, 25. p. e41884. 10.2196/41884 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/28683.

This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.

Scholars@Duke

Ma

Jessica Ma

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Musser

Robert Clayton Musser

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Clinical & medical informatics, particularly the design, implementation, and evaluation of systems such as Clinical Decision Support (CDS), Computerized Physician/Provider Order Entry (CPOE), and other aspects of the Electronic Health Record (EHR)

Fischer

Jonathan Eli Fischer

Associate Consulting Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

I have a longstanding interest in provider-patient communication as well as medical education. From my earliest days in practice, I have been involved in teaching medical students, residents and other clinicians. I was a small group leader at UNC Medical School in their Introduction to Clinical Medicine course for nearly a decade and The NC Academy of Family Physicians recognized me as a Master Preceptor for my work with learners in clinic. During my first years at Duke I was core teaching faculty in Duke's Family Medicine Residency program.  As a clinician educator with Palliative Care, I teach communication skills across the health system at Duke, and have been designated a Distinguished Faculty for teaching communication skills with Vitaltalk and Ariadne labs. I am invited regularly to teach other clinicians and other medical school faculty both nationally and internationally. Recently I have also been working with Duke's REACH center for Health Equity to develop a training for medical providers, aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of implicit racial bias in the medical encounter.

Bosworth

Hayden Barry Bosworth

Professor in Population Health Sciences

Dr. Bosworth is a health services researcher and Deputy Director of the Center of Innovation to Accelerate Discovery and Practice Transformation (ADAPT)  at the Durham VA Medical Center. He is also Vice Chair of Education and Professor of Population Health Sciences. He is also a Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Nursing at Duke University Medical Center and Adjunct Professor in Health Policy and Administration at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests comprise three overarching areas of research: 1) clinical research that provides knowledge for improving patients’ treatment adherence and self-management in chronic care; 2) translation research to improve access to quality of care; and 3) eliminate health care disparities. 

Dr. Bosworth is the recipient of an American Heart Association established investigator award, the 2013 VA Undersecretary Award for Outstanding Achievement in Health Services Research (The annual award is the highest honor for VA health services researchers), and a VA Senior Career Scientist Award. In terms of self-management, Dr. Bosworth has expertise developing interventions to improve health behaviors related to hypertension, coronary artery disease, and depression, and has been developing and implementing tailored patient interventions to reduce the burden of other chronic diseases. These trials focus on motivating individuals to initiate health behaviors and sustaining them long term and use members of the healthcare team, particularly pharmacists and nurses. He has been the Principal Investigator of over 30 trials resulting in over 400 peer reviewed publications and four books. This work has been or is being implemented in multiple arenas including Medicaid of North Carolina, private payers, The United Kingdom National Health System Direct, Kaiser Health care system, and the Veterans Affairs.

Areas of Expertise: Health Behavior, Health Services Research, Implementation Science, Health Measurement, and Health Policy

Dolor

Rowena Joy Dolor

Professor of Medicine

Rowena J. Dolor, MD, MHS did her medical training and internal medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center. She completed the Ambulatory Care/Health Services Research fellowship at the Durham VA Medical Center in 1996 and obtained her Masters in Health Sciences degree in Biometry (renamed MHS in Clinical Research) from the Duke University School of Medicine in 1998. Dr. Dolor was a staff physician in the Ambulatory Care Service at the Durham VA Medical Center and Research Associate at the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the Durham VAMC from 1995-2012.  She is currently an investigator of several federally-funded projects conducted in the community-based setting. Dr. Dolor served as a member of the AHRQ PBRN Resource Center Steering Committee and co-chaired the NAPCRG PBRN conference from 2012-2016.

Since 1996, Dr. Dolor has been the director of the Primary Care Research Consortium (PCRC), a network of primary care practices in the Duke University Health System and outlying communities. The PCRC has participated in over 100 industry- and investigator-initiated studies on hypertension, hyperlipidemia, asthma, otitis, obesity, diabetes, depression, anticoagulation, and vaccines. In 2002, the Duke PCRC received grant funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for Primary Care Practice-based Research Networks (PBRNs). The focus of her research pertains to primary care clinical and outcomes research. She has helped lead a number of comparative effectiveness studies and large, pragmatic trials in the primary care setting.   In addition, Dr. Dolor has led or co-led networks in otolaryngology and integrative medicine.

Dr. Dolor has contributed to the development and methodology of Practice-based Research Networks (PBRNs). She has served as a co-investigator on three online resources to help researchers conduct multi-center research in the primary care practice-based setting – (1) A toolkit for building and sustaining health research partnership with practices and communities, http://www.researchtoolkit.org/index.php (2) Toolkit for Developing and Conducting Multi-site Clinical Trials in Practice Based Research Networks, http://www.dartnet.info/ClinicalTrialsPBRNToolkit.htm ; and (3) PBRN Research Good Practices (PRGP), http://www.napcrg.org/PBRNResearchGoodPractice

From July 2009-June 2012, she served as the Associate Director for the Duke EPC. She worked closely with the Director, Gillian Sanders PhD, in overseeing the day-to-day functioning of EPC projects and supervising EPC personnel.  The Duke EPC was awarded a contract entitled “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009: Comprehensive EPC Comparative Effectiveness Reviews for Effective Health Care” to serve within a core group of EPCs to focus on a comprehensive approach to comparative effectiveness review (CER) and evidence synthesis. The Duke EPC area of concentration was cardiovascular and pulmonary disorders.

She previously served as the principal investigator for the systematic literature review for the AHA Scientific Statement: Evidence-based guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention in women published in 2004 and updated in 2007. She was the PI of four CER projects on “Noninvasive Technologies for the Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease in Women” and “Treatment Strategies for Women with CAD”, “PAD”, and “UA/NSTEMI” as well as upcoming CER topics on pulmonary arterial hypertension, peripheral artery disease and unstable angina/non-ST elevation myocardial infarction. 

Within the Duke Clinical and Translational Institute (CTSI), Dr. Dolor directs the collaboration with CTSI researchers on community-based PBRN projects. From 2011- 2014, she was co-chair of the CTSA PBRN Collaboration Workgroup, and a member of the Community Engagement Key Function Committee, the CTSA Strategic Goal 4 Combined Networking Group committee, and the CTSA Comparative Effectiveness Research Key Function Committee (CER KFC). Since September 2016, she serves as a Co-chair of the Dissemination, Implementation and Knowledge Transfer Workgroup within the Collaboration Engagement Domain Task Force.

In the fall of 2014, Dr. Dolor joined Vanderbilt part-time as a Consultant/Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine within the Division of General Internal Medicine. Her role is to assist in the formation of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Clinical Research Network, a PBRN in the mid-Tennessee region.  In addition, she is a co-investigator on the Mid-South Clinical Data Research Network, a PCORnet awardee, to build the partnership with the community practices for comparative effectiveness studies that will utilize the electronic health records/information system infrastructure of the CDRN. 




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