Ronen Rozenblum

A qualitative study of Canada’s experience with the implementation of electronic health information technology

Background In 2001, Canada Health Infoway unveiled a plan to implement a national system of interoperable electronic health records. This government-funded corporation introduced a novel model for interprovincial/territorial collaboration to establish core aspects of a national framework. Despite this

Patient-centred healthcare, social media and the internet: the perfect storm?

1.6 billion initiative, Canada continues to lag behind other Western countries in adopting electronic health records. We conducted a study to identify the success of different aspects of the Canadian plan and ways to improve the adoption of electronic health records. Methods We used a case study approach to assess the 10-year history of Canada’s e-health plan. National reports and documents were reviewed, and structured interviews were conducted with 29 key stakeholders representing national and provincial organizations responsible for establishing policy and strategic direction for health information technology. Using grounded theory, we analyzed transcripts of the interviews to identify themes and their relationships. Results Key stakeholders identified funding, national standards, patient registries and digital imaging as important achievements of the e-health plan. Lack of an e-health policy, inadequate involvement of clinicians, failure to establish a business case for using electronic health records, a focus on national rather than regional interoperability, and inflexibility in approach were seen as barriers to adoption of the plan. Interpretation To accelerate adoption of electronic health records and timely return on investment, an e-health policy needs to be tightly aligned with the major strategic directions of health care reform. Adoption needs to be actively fostered through a bottom-up, clinical-needs-first approach, a national policy for investment in electronic health records, and financial incentives based on patient outcomes that can be achieved with electronic health records.

The patient satisfaction chasm: the gap between hospital management and frontline clinicians

Patients are central to healthcare delivery, yet all too often their perspectives and input have not been considered by providers.1 ,2 This is beginning to change rapidly and is having a major impact across a range of dimensions. Patients are becoming more engaged in their care and patient-centred healthcare has emerged as a major domain of quality.3–6 At the same time, social media in particular and the internet more broadly are widely recognised as having produced huge effects across societies. For example, few would have predicted the Arab Spring, yet it was clearly enabled by media such as Facebook and Twitter. Now these technologies are beginning to pervade the healthcare space, just as they have so many others. But what will their effects be? These three domains—patient-centred healthcare, social media and the internet—are beginning to come together, with powerful and unpredictable consequences. We believe that they have the potential to create a major shift in how patients and healthcare organisations connect, in effect, the ‘perfect storm’, a phrase that has been used to describe a situation in which a rare combination of circumstances result in an event of unusual magnitude creating the potential for non-linear change.7 Historically, patients have paid relatively little attention to quality, safety and the experiences large groups of other patients have had, and have made choices about where to get healthcare based largely on factors like reputation, the recommendations of a friend or proximity.8 Part of the reason for this was that information about quality or the opinions of others about their care was hard to access before the internet. Today, patients appear to be becoming more engaged with their care in general, and one of the many results is that they are increasingly using the internet to share and rate …

Measuring patient-perceived quality of care in US hospitals using Twitter

Background Achieving high levels of patient satisfaction requires hospital management to be proactive in patient-centred care improvement initiatives and to engage frontline clinicians in this process. Method We developed a survey to assess the attitudes of clinicians towards hospital management activities with respect to improving patient satisfaction and surveyed clinicians in four academic hospitals located in Denmark, Israel, the UK and the USA. Results We collected 1004 questionnaires (79.9% response rate) from four hospitals in four countries on three continents. Overall, 90.4% of clinicians believed that improving patient satisfaction during hospitalisation was achievable, but only 9.2% of clinicians thought their department had a structured plan to do so, with significant differences between the countries (p<0.0001). Among responders, only 38% remembered targeted actions to improve patient satisfaction and just 34% stated having received feedback from hospital management regarding patient satisfaction status in their department during the past year. In multivariate analyses, clinicians who received feedback from hospital management and remembered targeted actions to improve patient satisfaction were more likely to state that their department had a structured plan to improve patient satisfaction. Conclusions This portrait of clinicians’ attitudes highlights a chasm between hospital management and frontline clinicians with respect to improving patient satisfaction. It appears that while hospital management asserts that patient-centred care is important and invests in patient satisfaction and patient experience surveys, our findings suggest that the majority do not have a structured plan for promoting improvement of patient satisfaction and engaging clinicians in the process.

A web-based, patient-centered toolkit to engage patients and caregivers in the acute care setting: a preliminary evaluation

Background Patients routinely use Twitter to share feedback about their experience receiving healthcare. Identifying and analysing the content of posts sent to hospitals may provide a novel real-time measure of quality, supplementing traditional, survey-based approaches. Objective To assess the use of Twitter as a supplemental data stream for measuring patient-perceived quality of care in US hospitals and compare patient sentiments about hospitals with established quality measures. Design 404 065 tweets directed to 2349 US hospitals over a 1-year period were classified as having to do with patient experience using a machine learning approach. Sentiment was calculated for these tweets using natural language processing. 11 602 tweets were manually categorised into patient experience topics. Finally, hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets were surveyed to understand how they use Twitter to interact with patients. Key results Roughly half of the hospitals in the US have a presence on Twitter. Of the tweets directed toward these hospitals, 34 725 (9.4%) were related to patient experience and covered diverse topics. Analyses limited to hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets revealed that they were more active on Twitter, more likely to be below the national median of Medicare patients (p<0.001) and above the national median for nurse/patient ratio (p=0.006), and to be a non-profit hospital (p<0.001). After adjusting for hospital characteristics, we found that Twitter sentiment was not associated with Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) ratings (but having a Twitter account was), although there was a weak association with 30-day hospital readmission rates (p=0.003). Conclusions Tweets describing patient experiences in hospitals cover a wide range of patient care aspects and can be identified using automated approaches. These tweets represent a potentially untapped indicator of quality and may be valuable to patients, researchers, policy makers and hospital administrators.

Influence of Shared Medical Appointments on Patient Satisfaction: A Retrospective 3-Year Study

We implemented a web-based, patient-centered toolkit that engages patients/caregivers in the hospital plan of care by facilitating education and patient-provider communication. Of the 585 eligible patients approached on medical intensive care and oncology units, 239 were enrolled (119 patients, 120 caregivers). The most common reason for not approaching the patient was our inability to identify a health care proxy when a patient was incapacitated. Significantly more caregivers were enrolled in medical intensive care units compared with oncology units (75% vs 32%; P < .01). Of the 239 patient/caregivers, 158 (66%) and 97 (41%) inputted a daily and overall goal, respectively. Use of educational content was highest for medications and test results and infrequent for problems. The most common clinical theme identified in 291 messages sent by 158 patients/caregivers was health concerns, needs, preferences, or questions (19%, 55 of 291). The average system usability scores and satisfaction ratings of a sample of surveyed enrollees were favorable. From analysis of feedback, we identified barriers to adoption and outlined strategies to promote use.

Organizational strategies for promoting patient and provider uptake of personal health records

PURPOSE Shared medical appointments (SMAs) are becoming popular, but little is known about their association with patient experience in primary care. We performed an exploratory analysis examining overall satisfaction and patient-centered care experiences across key domains of the patient-centered medical home among patients attending SMAs vs usual care appointments. METHODS We undertook a cross-sectional study using a mailed questionnaire measuring levels of patient satisfaction and other indicators of patient-centered care among 921 SMA and 921 usual care patients between 2008 and 2010. Propensity scores adjusted for potential case mix differences between the groups. Multivariate logistic regression assessed propensity-matched patients’ ratings of care. Generalized estimating equations accounted for physician-level clustering. RESULTS A total of 40% of SMA patients and 31% of usual care patients responded. In adjusted analyses, SMA patients were more likely to rate their overall satisfaction with care as “very good” when compared with usual care counterparts (odds ratio = 1.26; 95% CI, 1.05–1.52). In the analysis of patient-centered medical home elements, SMA patients rated their care as more accessible and more sensitive to their needs, whereas usual care patients reported greater satisfaction with physician communication and time spent during their appointment. CONCLUSIONS Overall, SMA patients appear more satisfied with their care relative to patients receiving usual care. SMAs may also improve access to care and deliver care that patients find to be sensitive to their needs. Further research should focus on enhancing patient-clinician communication within an SMA as this model of care becomes more widely adopted.

Early recognition of acutely deteriorating patients in non-intensive care units: Assessment of an innovative monitoring technology

OBJECTIVE To investigate organizational strategies to promote personal health records (PHRs) adoption with a focus on patients with chronic disease. METHODS Using semi-structured interviews and a web-based survey, we sampled US health delivery organizations which had implemented PHRs for at least 12 months, were recognized as PHR innovators, and had scored highly in national patient satisfaction surveys. Respondents had lead positions for clinical information systems or high-risk population management. Using grounded theory approach, thematic categories were derived from interviews and coupled with data from the survey. RESULTS Interviews were conducted with 30 informants from 16 identified organizations. Organizational strategies were directed towards raising patient awareness via multimedia communications, and provider acceptance and uptake. Strategies for providers were grouped into six main themes: organizational vision, governance and policies, work process redesign, staff training, information technology (IT) support, and monitoring and incentives. Successful organizations actively communicated their vision, engaged leaders at all levels, had clear governance, planning, and protocols, set targets, and celebrated achievement. The most effective strategy for patient uptake was through health professional encouragement. No specific outreach efforts targeted patients with chronic disease. Registration and PHR activity was routinely measured but without reference to a denominator population or high risk subpopulations. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Successful PHR implementation represents a social change and operational project catalyzed by a technical solution. The key to clinician acceptance is making their work easier. However, organizations will likely not achieve the value they want from PHRs unless they target specific populations and monitor their uptake.

Personal health records for patients with chronic disease: a major opportunity.

BACKGROUND Continuous vital sign monitoring has the potential to detect early clinical deterioration. While commonly employed in the intensive care unit (ICU), accurate and noninvasive monitoring technology suitable for floor patients has yet to be used reliably. OBJECTIVE To establish the accuracy of the Earlysense continuous monitoring system in predicting clinical deterioration. DESIGN Noninterventional prospective study with retrospective data analysis. SETTING Two medical wards in 2 academic medical centers. PATIENTS Patients admitted to a medical ward with a diagnosis of an acute respiratory condition. INTERVENTION Enrolled patients were monitored for heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) by the Earlysense monitor with the alerts turned off. MEASUREMENTS Retrospective analysis of vital sign data was performed on a derivation cohort to identify optimal cutoffs for threshold and 24-hour trend alerts. This was internally validated through correlation with clinical events recognized through chart review. RESULTS Of 113 patients included in the study, 9 suffered major clinical deterioration. Alerts were found to be infrequent (2.7 and 0.2 alerts per patient-day for threshold and trend alert, respectively). For the threshold alerts, sensitivity and specificity in predicting deterioration was found to be 82% and 67%, respectively, for HR and 64% and 81%, respectively, for RR. For trend alerts, sensitivity and specificity were 78% and 90% for HR, and 100% and 64% for RR, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The Earlysense monitor was able to continuously measure RR and HR, providing low alert frequency. The current study provides data supporting the ability of this system to accurately predict patient deterioration.

Policy initiatives for health information technology: a qualitative study of U.S. expectations and Canada's experience.

BACKGROUND Personal health records (PHRs) connected to a physicians electronic health record system hold substantial promise for supporting and engaging patients with chronic disease. OBJECTIVES To explore how U.S. health care organizations are currently utilizing PHRs for chronic disease populations. METHODS A mixed methods study including semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire was conducted. A purposive sample was developed of health care organizations which were recognized as exemplars for PHRs and were high performers in national patient satisfaction surveys (H-CAHPS or CAHPS). Within each organization, participants were health IT leaders or those managing high-risk or chronic disease populations. RESULTS Interviews were conducted with 30 informants and completed questionnaires were received from 16 organizations (84% response rate). Most PHRs allowed patients to access health records and educational material, message their provider, renew prescriptions and request appointments. Patient generated data was increasingly being sought and combined with messaging, resulted in greater understanding of patient health and functioning outside of the clinic visit. However for chronic disease populations, there was little targeted involvement in PHR design and few tools to help interpret and manage their conditions beyond those offered for all. The PHR was largely uncoupled from high risk population management interventions and no clear framework for future PHR development emerged. CONCLUSION This technology is currently underutilized and represents a major opportunity given the potential benefits of patient engagement and shared decision making. A coherent patient-centric PHR design and evaluation strategy is required to realize its potential and maximize this natural hub for multidisciplinary care co-ordination.