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Median alert burden remains relatively low among health care professionals
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SAN DIEGO — The number of electronic provider alerts for acute kidney injury remains high, yet alert burden was generally low, according to data presented at ASN Kidney Week 2018.
“Alert burden is relatively low for the number of alerts that are popping for patients, so alert fatigue doesn’t seem to be as big of an issue as we would have thought,” Melissa Martin, MA, said here.
Martin and colleagues randomized 6,030 patients to real-time, electronic health record-based AKI alerts or usual care across six hospitals. At 10 months, 10,665 alerts had fired for 217 patients with AKI during a 6-week period. Overall, 996 unique providers were exposed to a median of 0.09 alerts per day per provider. Physician assistants and attending physicians received the fewest alerts, while fellows received the most. ICUs saw the highest burden, and the burden was substantially lower in emergency departments and hospital wards.
Martin noted the importance of rigorously testing alert results to make sure these are improving patient outcomes.
“In the future, just to kind of address the alert fatigue issue, we’re going to be developing more intervention-focused alerts, as well as trying to pick out subgroups of patients that might benefit the most,” Martin said. – by Kristine Houck, MA, ELS, and Joe Gramigna
Reference:
Martin M, et al. Abstract SA-PO547. Presented at: ASN Kidney Week; San Diego; Oct. 23-28, 2018.
Disclosure s: Martin reports no relevant financial disclosures. Researchers received funding from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.