An EHR-embedded COVID-19 patient discharge protocol standardized care and follow-up at the University of Colorado Hospital and 11 other UCHealth hospitals. Of the more than 400 patients discharged from late April to June 2020, 4% were readmitted and 3% visited an emergency department within 30 days of discharge, primarily for venous thromboembolism, researchers reported in the American Journal of Medical Quality.
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A California law effective in January 2022 requires all prescriptions to be issued electronically, with some exceptions. Health care providers can acquire standalone software or use EHR-embedded prescribing tools.
An EHR-embedded registry may help clinicians identify and close gaps in cardiovascular care for patients with cancer, according to a study in JMIR Cardio. The study authors also said EHR data can be used to populate a cardio-oncology registry quickly for research.
FDA approval was based on retrospective data for nearly all of the 130 medical artificial intelligence platforms reviewed for a study in Nature, and most disclosures lacked data on the number of sites used to evaluate the platform or whether the platform had been validated by race, gender or location. Developers of medical AI algorithms should do prospective testing at a variety of sites and include diverse patient populations, senior author James Zou says.
The University of Colorado Hospital brought in advanced practice nurses, translators and cultural navigators from the Spring Institute to help patients with COVID-19 and their families with limited English proficiency navigate the health care system and overcome cultural barriers to health. Since launching the program in October, medication compliance, understanding of COVID-19, access to oxygen and other medical supplies, follow-up care, and social determinants of health have improved within the target patient populations, according to the hospital.
A clinical decision support tool that guides health care professionals through evaluation of suspected COVID-19 patients reduced the time needed, number of repeated tests, time spent in isolation units and misdiagnosis of people with false-negative tests, researchers reported in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The EHR-embedded tool developed by infectious disease specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital runs clinicians through a series of questions about the patient's symptoms, risk factors and imaging findings based on current guidelines.