Low-value wound care: Are nurses and physicians choosing wisely? A mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: Choosing Wisely is an international movement that stimulates conversations about unnecessary care. The campaign created five recommendations including a statement that less wound care is sometimes better. AIMS: The study aims to evaluate nurses' and physicians' adherence to the Choosing Wisely recommendations for acute wound care in the Netherlands and the barriers and facilitators to improve this. DESIGN: This is a mixed methods study using a survey and interviews. METHODS: The survey was completed by 171 nurses and 71 physicians from November 2017 to February 2018. A total of 17 nurses and 6 physicians were interviewed. RESULTS: Awareness of the five recommendations ranged from 62% to 89% for nurses and 46% to 85% for physicians. However, up to 15% of the nurses and 28% of physicians were aware but did not adhere to the recommendations. Barriers to adhering were a lack of knowledge, the work environment and perceptions of patients' preferences. Repeated attention, cost-consciousness and an open culture facilitated the implementation. CONCLUSION: Although most nurses and physicians were aware of the recommendations, not all adhered to them. Increasing awareness is not enough for successful implementation. A tailored approach that removes the barriers is necessary, such as increasing knowledge about wounds and changing the work environment.

The Impact of Structured and Standardized Documentation on Documentation Quality; a Multicenter, Retrospective Study.

The reuse of healthcare data for various purposes will become increasingly important in the future. To enable the reuse of clinical data, structured and standardized documentation is conditional. However, the primary purpose of clinical documentation is to support high-quality patient care. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of increased structured and standardized documentation on the quality of notes in the Electronic Health Record. A multicenter, retrospective design was used to assess the difference in note quality between 144 unstructured and 144 structured notes. Independent reviewers measured note quality by scoring the notes with the Qnote instrument. This instrument rates all note elements independently using and results in a grand mean score on a 0-100 scale. The mean quality score for unstructured notes was 64.35 (95% CI 61.30-67.35). Structured and standardized documentation improved the Qnote quality score to 77.2 (95% CI 74.18-80.21), a 12.8 point difference (p < 0.001). Furthermore, results showed that structured notes were significantly longer than unstructured notes. Nevertheless, structured notes were more clear and concise. Structured documentation led to a significant increase in note quality. Moreover, considering the benefits of structured data recording in terms of data reuse, implementing structured and standardized documentation into the EHR is recommended.

Using Text Mining Techniques to Identify Health Care Providers With Patient Safety Problems: Exploratory Study.

BACKGROUND: Regulatory bodies such as health care inspectorates can identify potential patient safety problems in health care providers by analyzing patient complaints. However, it is challenging to analyze the large number of complaints. Text mining techniques may help identify signals of problems with patient safety at health care providers. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to explore whether employing text mining techniques on patient complaint databases can help identify potential problems with patient safety at health care providers and automatically predict the severity of patient complaints. METHODS: We performed an exploratory study on the complaints database of the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate with more than 22,000 written complaints. Severe complaints are defined as those cases where the inspectorate contact point experts deemed it worthy of a triage by the inspectorate, or complaints that led to direct action by the inspectorate. We investigated a range of supervised machine learning techniques to assign a severity label to complaints that can be used to prioritize which incoming complaints need the most attention. We studied several features based on the complaints' written content, including sentiment analysis, to decide which were helpful for severity prediction. Finally, we showcased how we could combine these severity predictions and automatic keyword analysis on the complaints database and listed health care providers and their organization-specific complaints to determine the average severity of complaints per organization. RESULTS: A straightforward text classification approach using a bag-of-words feature representation worked best for the severity prediction of complaints. We obtained an accuracy of 87%-93% (2658-2990 of 3319 complaints) on the held-out test set and an F1 score of 45%-51% on the severe complaints. The skewed class distribution led to only reasonable recall (47%-54%) and precision (44%-49%) scores. The use of sentiment analysis for severity prediction was not helpful. By combining the predicted severity outcomes with an automatic keyword analysis, we identified several health care providers that could have patient safety problems. CONCLUSIONS: Text mining techniques for analyzing complaints by civilians can support inspectorates. They can automatically predict the severity of the complaints, or they can be used for keyword analysis. This can help the inspectorate detect potential patient safety problems, or support prioritizing follow-up supervision activities by sorting complaints based on the severity per organization or per sector.

The Effect of Noninvasive Telemonitoring for Chronic Heart Failure on Health Care Utilization: Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: Chronic heart failure accounts for approximately 1%-2% of health care expenditures in most developed countries. These costs are primarily driven by hospitalizations and comorbidities. Telemonitoring has been proposed to reduce the number of hospitalizations and decrease the cost of treatment for patients with heart failure. However, the effects of telemonitoring on health care utilization remain unclear. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review aims to study the effect of telemonitoring programs on health care utilization and costs in patients with chronic heart failure. We assess the effect of telemonitoring on hospitalizations, emergency department visits, length of stay, hospital days, nonemergency department visits, and health care costs. METHODS: We searched PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science for randomized controlled trials and nonrandomized studies on noninvasive telemonitoring and health care utilization. We included studies published between January 2010 and August 2020. For each study, we extracted the reported data on the effect of telemonitoring on health care utilization. We used P<.05 and CIs not including 1.00 to determine whether the effect was statistically significant. RESULTS: We included 16 randomized controlled trials and 13 nonrandomized studies. Inclusion criteria, population characteristics, and outcome measures differed among the included studies. Most studies showed no effect of telemonitoring on health care utilization. The number of hospitalizations was significantly reduced in 38% (9/24) of studies, whereas emergency department visits were reduced in 13% (1/8) of studies. An increase in nonemergency department visits (6/9, 67% of studies) was reported. Health care costs showed ambiguous results, with 3 studies reporting an increase in health care costs, 3 studies reporting a reduction, and 4 studies reporting no significant differences. Health care cost reductions were realized through a reduction in hospitalizations, whereas increases were caused by the high costs of the telemonitoring program or increased health care utilization. CONCLUSIONS: Most telemonitoring programs do not show clear effects on health care utilization measures, except for an increase in nonemergency outpatient department visits. This may be an unwarranted side effect rather than a prerequisite for effective telemonitoring. The consequences of telemonitoring on nonemergency outpatient visits should receive more attention from regulators, payers, and providers. This review further demonstrates the high clinical and methodological heterogeneity of telemonitoring programs. This should be taken into account in future meta-analyses aimed at identifying the effective components of telemonitoring programs.

Educating Patients by Providing Timely Information Using Smartphone and Tablet Apps: Systematic Review.

BACKGROUND: Patient education is a crucial element within health care. It is a known predictor for increased engagement in shared decision making, improved medication and treatment adherence, higher levels of satisfaction, and even better treatment outcomes. Unfortunately, often patients only remember a very limited amount of medical information. An important reason is that most patients are simply not capable of processing large amounts of new medical information in a short time. Apps for smartphones and tablets have the potential to actively educate patients by providing them with timely information through the use of push notifications. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this systematic review is to provide an overview of the effects of using smartphone and tablet apps to educate patients with timely education. Within this review, we focused on patients that receive their care in a hospital setting. We assessed the effects of the interventions on outcomes, such as patients' knowledge about their illness and treatment, adherence to treatment instructions and to medication usage, and satisfaction with the care they received. METHODS: A comprehensive search of MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online), Embase, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), and Web of Science was conducted. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published between January 2015 and November 2019 were eligible for inclusion. Two reviewers independently searched and screened articles, assessed study quality and risk of bias, and extracted the data. Due to the heterogeneity of populations, interventions, and outcomes, a meta-analysis was not deemed appropriate. Instead, a narrative synthesis is presented. RESULTS: A total of 21 RCTs with 4106 participants were included. Compared to usual care, overall effectiveness of the interventions was demonstrated in 69% of the outcomes. Effectiveness increased to 82% when the intervention had a duration shorter than one month and increased to 78% when the intervention provided at least one push notification per week. The interventions showed the highest effects on satisfaction with information, adherence to treatment instructions and to medication usage, clinical outcomes, and knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: This review demonstrates that educating patients with timely medical information through their smartphones or tablets improves their levels of knowledge, medication or treatment adherence, satisfaction, and clinical outcomes, as well as having a positive effect on health care economics. These effects are most pronounced in interventions with a short duration (ie, less than a month) and with a high frequency of messages to patients (ie, once per week or more). With the knowledge that patient education is a predictor for improved outcomes and the fact that patients have obvious difficulties processing large amounts of new medical information, we suggest incorporating the delivery of timely information through smartphone and tablet apps within current medical practices.

Identification of Factors Influencing the Adoption of Health Information Technology by Nurses Who Are Digitally Lagging: In-Depth Interview Study.

BACKGROUND: The introduction of health information technology (HIT) has drastically changed health care organizations and the way health care professionals work. Some health care professionals have trouble coping efficiently with the demands of HIT and the personal and professional changes it requires. Lagging in digital knowledge and skills hampers health care professionals from adhering to professional standards regarding the use of HIT and may cause professional performance problems, especially in the older professional population. It is important to gain more insight into the reasons and motivations behind the technology issues experienced by these professionals, as well as to explore what could be done to solve them. OBJECTIVE: Our primary research objective was to identify factors that influence the adoption of HIT in a sample of nurses who describe themselves as digitally lagging behind the majority of their colleagues in their workplaces. Furthermore, we aimed to formulate recommendations for practice and leadership on how to help and guide these nurses through ongoing digital transformations in their health care work settings. METHODS: In a Dutch university medical center, 10 face-to-face semi-structured interviews were performed with registered nurses (RN). Ammenwerth's FITT-framework (fit between the Individual, Task, and Technology) was used to guide the interview topic list and to formulate themes to explore. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data. The FITT-framework was also used to further interpret and clarify the interview findings. RESULTS: Analyses of the interview data uncovered 5 main categories and 12 subthemes. The main categories were: (1) experience with digital working, (2) perception and meaning, (3) barriers, (4) facilitators, and (5) future perspectives. All participants used electronic devices and digital systems, including the electronic health record. The latter was experienced by some as user-unfriendly, time-consuming, and not supportive in daily professional practice. Most of the interviewees described digital working as "no fun at all," "working in a fake world," "stressful," and "annoying." There was a lack of general digital knowledge and little or no formal basic digital training or education. A negative attitude toward computer use and a lack of digital skills contributed to feelings of increased incompetency and postponement or avoidance of the use of HIT, both privately and professionally. Learning conditions of digital training and education did not meet personal learning needs and learning styles. A positive impact was seen in the work environment when colleagues and nurse managers were aware and sensitive to the difficulties participants experienced in developing digital skills, and when there was continuous training on the job and peer support from digitally savvy colleagues. The availability of a digital play environment combined with learning on the job and support of knowledgeable peers was experienced as helpful and motivating by participants. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses who are digitally lagging often have had insufficient and ineffective digital education. This leads to stress, frustration, feelings of incompetency, and postponement or avoidance of HIT use. A digital training approach tailored to the learning needs and styles of these nurses is needed, as well as an on-the-job training structure and adequate peer support. Hospital management and nurse leadership should be informed about the importance of the fit between technology, task, and the individual for adequate adoption of HIT.

Re-admission patterns in England and the Netherlands: a comparison based on administrative data of all hospitals.

BACKGROUND: Examining variation in patterns of re-admissions between countries can be valuable for mutual learning in order to reduce unnecessary re-admissions. The aim of this study was to compare re-admission rates and reasons for re-admissions between England and the Netherlands. METHODS: We used data from 85 Dutch hospitals (1 355 947 admissions) and 451 English hospitals (5 260 227 admissions) in 2014 (96% of all Dutch hospitals and 100% of all English NHS hospitals). Re-admission data from England and the Netherlands were compared for all hospital patients and for specific diagnosis groups: pneumonia, urinary tract infection, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary atherosclerosis, biliary tract disease, hip fracture and acute myocardial infarction. Re-admissions were categorized using a classification system developed on administrative data. The classification distinguishes between potentially preventable re-admissions and other reasons for re-admission. RESULTS: England had a higher 30-day re-admission rate (adjusted for age and gender) compared to the Netherlands: 11.17% (95% CI 11.14-11.20%) vs. 9.83% (95% CI 9.77-9.88%). The main differences appeared to be in re-admissions for the elderly (England 17.2% vs. the Netherlands 10.0%) and in emergency re-admissions (England 85.3% of all 30-day re-admissions vs. the Netherlands 66.8%). In the Netherlands, however, more emergency re-admissions were classified as potentially preventable compared to England (33.8% vs. 28.8%). CONCLUSIONS: The differences found between England and the Netherlands indicate opportunities to reduce unnecessary re-admissions. For England this concerns more expanded palliative care, integrated social care and reduction of waiting times. In the Netherlands, the use of treatment plans for daily life could be increased.

Patient and Health Care Provider Experiences With a Recently Introduced Patient Portal in an Academic Hospital in the Netherlands: Mixed Methods Study.

BACKGROUND: In the Netherlands, the health care system and related information technology landscape are fragmented. Recently, hospitals have started to launch patient portals. It is not clear how these portals are used by patients and their health care providers (HCPs). OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to explore the adoption, use, usability, and usefulness of a recently introduced patient portal in an academic hospital to learn lessons for the implementation of patient portals in a fragmented health care system. METHODS: A mixed methods study design was used. In the quantitative study arm, characteristics of patients who used the portal were analyzed, in addition to the utilization of the different functionalities of the portal. In the qualitative study arms, think-aloud observations were made to explore usability. Focus group discussions were conducted among patients and HCPs of the dermatology and ophthalmology outpatient departments. Thematic content analysis of qualitative data was carried out and overarching themes were identified using a framework analysis. RESULTS: One year after the introduction of the portal, 24,514 patients, 13.49% of all patients who visited the hospital, had logged in to the portal. Adoption of the portal was associated with the age group 45 to 75 years, a higher socioeconomic status, and having at least one medical diagnosis. Overarching themes from the qualitative analyses were (1) usability and user-friendliness of the portal, (2) HCP-patient communication through the portal, (3) usefulness of the information that can be accessed through the portal, (4) integration of the portal in care and work processes, and (5) HCP and patient roles and relationships. CONCLUSIONS: One year after the introduction of the patient portal, patients and HCPs who used the portal recognized the potential of the portal to engage patients in their care processes, facilitate patient-HCP communication, and increase patient convenience. Uncertainties among patients and HCPs about how to use the messaging functionality and limited integration of the portal in care and work processes are likely to have limited portal use and usefulness.

To what degree can variations in readmission rates be explained on the level of the hospital? a multilevel study using a large Dutch database.

BACKGROUND: It is not clear which part of the variation in hospital readmissions can be attributed to the standard of care hospitals provide. This is in spite of their widespread use as an indicator of a lower quality of care. The aim of this study is to assess the variation in readmissions on the hospital level after adjusting for case-mix factors. METHODS: We performed multilevel logistic regression analyses with a random intercept for the factor 'hospital' to estimate the variance on the hospital level after adjustment for case-mix variables. We used administrative data from 53 Dutch hospitals from 2010 to 2012 (58% of all Dutch hospitals; 2,577,053 admissions). We calculated models for the top ten diagnosis groups with the highest number of readmissions after an index admission for a surgical procedure. We calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) per diagnosis group in order to explore the variation in readmissions between hospitals. Furthermore, we determined C-statistics for the models with and without a random effect on the hospital level to determine the discriminative ability. RESULTS: The ICCs on the hospital level ranged from 0.48 to 2.70% per diagnosis group. The C-statistics of the models with a random effect on the hospital level ranged from 0.58 to 0.65 for the different diagnosis groups. The C-statistics of the models that included the hospital level were higher compared to the models without this level. CONCLUSIONS: For some diagnosis groups, a small part of the explained variation in readmissions was found on the hospital level, after adjusting for case-mix variables. However, the C-statistics of the prediction models are moderate, so the discriminative ability is limited. Readmission indicators might be useful for identifying areas for improving quality within hospitals on the level of diagnosis or specialty.

Limit, lean or listen? A typology of low-value care that gives direction in de-implementation.

BACKGROUND: Overuse of unnecessary care is widespread around the world. This so-called low-value care provides no benefit for the patient, wastes resources and can cause harm. The concept of low-value care is broad and there are different reasons for care to be of low-value. Hence, different strategies might be necessary to reduce it and awareness of this may help in designing a de-implementation strategy. Based on a literature scan and discussions with experts, we identified three types of low-value care. RESULTS: The type ineffective care is proven ineffective, such as antibiotics for a viral infection. Inefficient care is in essence effective, but is of low-value through inefficient provision or inappropriate intensity, such as chronic benzodiazepine use. Unwanted care is in essence appropriate for the clinical condition it targets, but is low-value since it does not fit the patients' preferences, such as a treatment aimed to cure a patient that prefers palliative care. In this paper, we argue that these three types differ in their most promising strategy for de-implementation and that our typology gives direction in choosing whether to limit, lean or listen. CONCLUSION: We developed a typology that provides insight in the different reasons for care to be of low-value. We believe that this typology is helpful in designing a tailor-made strategy for reducing low-value care.

Prevention of and dealing with poor performance: an interview study about how professional associations aim to support healthcare professionals.

OBJECTIVE: To explore how professional associations of nine healthcare professions aim to support professionals to prevent and deal with poor performance. DESIGN: Qualitative interview study. SETTING: The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS: Representatives of professional associations for dentists, general practitioners, medical specialists, midwives, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, psychologists and psychotherapists. INTERVENTIONS: During nine face-to-face semi-structured interviews we asked how associations aim to support professionals in prevention of and dealing with poor performance. Following the first interview, we monitored new initiatives in support over a 2.5-year period, after which we conducted a second interview. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Available policy and support regarding poor performance. RESULTS: Three themes emerged from our data (i.e. elaborating on professional performance, performance insight and dealing with poor performance) for which we identified a total of 10 categories of support. Support concerned professional codes, guidelines and codes of conduct, quality registers, individual performance assessment, peer consultation, practice evaluation, helpdesk and expert counselling, a protocol for dealing with poor performance, a place for support and to report poor performance, and internal disciplinary procedures. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides an overview of support given to nine healthcare professions by their associations regarding poor performance, and identifies gaps that associations could follow up on, such as clarifying what to do when confronted with a poorly performing colleague, supporting professionals that poorly perform, and developing methods for individual performance assessment to gain performance insight. A next step would be to evaluate the use and effect of different types of support.

How to identify potentially preventable readmissions by classifying them using a national administrative database.

IMPORTANCE: Hospital readmissions are being used increasingly as an indicator of quality of care. However, it remains difficult to identify potentially preventable readmissions. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the identification of potentially preventable hospital readmissions by using a classification of readmissions based on administrative data. DESIGN AND SETTING: We classified a random sample of 455 readmissions to a Dutch university hospital in 2014 using administrative data. We compared these results to a classification based on reviewing the medical records of these readmissions to evaluate the accuracy of classification by administrative data. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Frequencies of categories of readmissions based on reviewing records versus those based on administrative data. Cohen's kappa for the agreement between both methods. The sensitivity and specificity of the identification of potentially preventable readmissions with classification by administrative data. RESULTS: Reviewing the medical records of acute readmissions resulted in 28.5% of the records being classified as potentially preventable. With administrative data this was 44.1%. There was slight agreement between both methods: ƙ 0.08 (95% CI: 0.02-0.15, P < 0.05). The sensitivity of the classification of potentially preventable readmissions by administrative data was 63.1% and the specificity was 63.5%. CONCLUSIONS: This explorative study demonstrated differences between categorizing readmissions based on reviewing records compared to using administrative data. Therefore, this tool can only be used in practice with great caution. It is not suitable for penalizing hospitals based on their number of potentially preventable readmissions. However, hospitals might use this classification as a screening tool to identify potentially preventable readmissions more efficiently.

Investigating the Potential Contribution of Patient Rating Sites to Hospital Supervision: Exploratory Results From an Interview Study in the Netherlands.

BACKGROUND: Over the last decades, the patient perspective on health care quality has been unconditionally integrated into quality management. For several years now, patient rating sites have been rapidly gaining attention. These offer a new approach toward hearing the patient's perspective on the quality of health care. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to explore whether and how patient reviews of hospitals, as reported on rating sites, have the potential to contribute to health care inspector's daily supervision of hospital care. METHODS: Given the unexplored nature of the topic, an interview study among hospital inspectors was designed in the Netherlands. We performed 2 rounds of interviews with 10 senior inspectors, addressing their use and their judgment on the relevance of review data from a rating site. RESULTS: All 10 Dutch senior hospital inspectors participated in this research. The inspectors initially showed some reluctance to use the major patient rating site in their daily supervision. This was mainly because of objections such as worries about how representative they are, subjectivity, and doubts about the relevance of patient reviews for supervision. However, confrontation with, and assessment of, negative reviews by the inspectors resulted in 23% of the reviews being deemed relevant for risk identification. Most inspectors were cautiously positive about the contribution of the reviews to their risk identification. CONCLUSIONS: Patient rating sites may be of value to the risk-based supervision of hospital care carried out by the Health Care Inspectorate. Health care inspectors do have several objections against the use of patient rating sites for daily supervision. However, when they are presented with texts of negative reviews from a hospital under their supervision, it appears that most inspectors consider it as an additional source of information to detect poor quality of care. Still, it should always be accompanied and verified by other quality and safety indicators. More research on the value and usability of patient rating sites in daily hospital supervision and other health settings is needed.

Trends in patient satisfaction in Dutch university medical centers: room for improvement for all.

BACKGROUND: Results of patient satisfaction research provide hospitals areas for quality improvement. Although it may take several years to achieve such improvement, not all hospitals analyze changes in patient satisfaction over time structurally. Consequently, they lack information from patients' perspective on effectiveness of improvement programs. This study presents a trend analysis of the patient satisfaction scores in the eight university medical centers in the Netherlands. We focus on the trends, effect size and its consequences for improving patient-centered care. METHODS: The Core Questionnaire for the assessment of Patient satisfaction (COPS) was used in four large-scale nationwide comparative studies (2003-2009). Data were analyzed at a national level, and for each academic hospital separately. We analyzed the polynomial contrasts in the four measurements by performing an univariate analysis of variance (ANCOVA). The trend lines are presented graphically, with the means, SD, F-statistics and the standardized effect size including confidence intervals expressed by Cohen's d. By analyzing the (logit transformed) percentages of very satisfied patients we examined the change scores. RESULTS: The dataset consisted of 58,055 inpatients and 79,498 outpatients. Significant positive trends were found on national level and hospital level, especially in outpatient departments. Improvement was especially seen on the dimensions "information" and "discharge and aftercare". Not only university medical centers with a lower score at the start, but surprisingly some best practices and university medical centers with a high initial score improved. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that significant trends in patient satisfaction can be identified on a national and a hospital level, in inpatient and outpatient departments. The observed effect size expressed by Cohen's d is rather small. Hospitals have found room for improvement, even hospitals with initial high satisfaction scores. We recommend that hospitals monitor their patient satisfaction scores over time and relate these to quality interventions and organizational changes. Furthermore, we recommend to expand the research to subgroups of unsatisfied patients to improve patient-centered care for all patients.

Exposure to and experiences with a computerized decision support intervention in primary care: results from a process evaluation.

BACKGROUND: Trials evaluating the effects of interventions usually provide little insight into the factors responsible for (lack of) changes in desired outcomes. A process evaluation alongside a trial can shed light on the mechanisms responsible for the outcomes of a trial. The aim of this study was to investigate exposure to and experiences with a computerized decision support system (CDSS) intervention, in order to gain insight into the intervention's impact and to provide suggestions for improvement. METHODS: A process evaluation was conducted as part of a large-scale cluster-randomized controlled trial investigating the effects of the CDSS NHGDoc on quality of care. Data on exposure to and experiences with the intervention were collected during the trial period among participants in both the intervention and control group - whenever applicable - by means of the NHGDoc server and an electronic questionnaire. Multiple data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Ninety-nine percent (n = 229) of the included practices generated data for the NHGDoc server and 50 % (n = 116) responded to the questionnaire: both general practitioners (GPs; n = 112; 49 %) and practice nurses (PNs; n = 52; 37 %) participated. The actual exposure to the NHGDoc system and specific heart failure module was limited with 52 % of the GPs and 42 % of the PNs reporting to either never or rarely use the system. Overall, users had a positive attitude towards CDSSs. The most perceived barriers to using NHGDoc were a lack of learning capacity of the system, the additional time and work it requires to use the CDSS, irrelevant alerts, too high intensity of alerts and insufficient knowledge regarding the system. CONCLUSIONS: Several types of barriers may have negatively affected the impact of the intervention. Although users are generally positive about CDSSs, a large share of them is insufficiently aware of the functions of NHGDoc and, finds the decision support not always useful or relevant and difficult to integrate into daily practice. In designing CDSS interventions we suggest to more intensely involve the end-users and increase the system's flexibility and learning capacity. To improve implementation a proper introduction of a CDSS among its target group including adequate training is advocated. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical trials NCT01773057 .

Using patient experiences on Dutch social media to supervise health care services: exploratory study.

BACKGROUND: Social media has become mainstream and a growing number of people use it to share health care-related experiences, for example on health care rating sites. These users' experiences and ratings on social media seem to be associated with quality of care. Therefore, information shared by citizens on social media could be of additional value for supervising the quality and safety of health care services by regulatory bodies, thereby stimulating participation by consumers. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to identify the added value of social media for two types of supervision by the Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate (DHI), which is the regulatory body charged with supervising the quality and safety of health care services in the Netherlands. These were (1) supervision in response to incidents reported by individuals, and (2) risk-based supervision. METHODS: We performed an exploratory study in cooperation with the DHI and searched different social media sources such as Twitter, Facebook, and healthcare rating sites to find additional information for these incidents and topics, from five different sectors. Supervision experts determined the added value for each individual result found, making use of pre-developed scales. RESULTS: Searches in social media resulted in relevant information for six of 40 incidents studied and provided relevant additional information in 72 of 116 cases in risk-based supervision of long-term elderly care. CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that social media could be used to include the patient's perspective in supervision. However, it appeared that the rating site ZorgkaartNederland was the only source that provided information that was of additional value for the DHI, while other sources such as forums and social networks like Twitter and Facebook did not result in additional information. This information could be of importance for health care inspectorates, particularly for its enforcement by risk-based supervision in care of the elderly. Further research is needed to determine the added value for other health care sectors.

Implementation of multiple-domain covering computerized decision support systems in primary care: a focus group study on perceived barriers.

BACKGROUND: Despite the widespread availability of computerized decision support systems (CDSSs) in various healthcare settings, evidence on their uptake and effectiveness is still limited. Most barrier studies focus on CDSSs that are aimed at a limited number of decision points within selected small-scale academic settings. The aim of this study was to identify the perceived barriers to using large-scale implemented CDSSs covering multiple disease areas in primary care. METHODS: Three focus group sessions were conducted in which 24 primary care practitioners (PCPs) participated (general practitioners, general practitioners in training and practice nurses), varying from 7 to 9 per session. In each focus group, barriers to using CDSSs were discussed using a semi-structured literature-based topic list. Focus group discussions were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers independently performed thematic content analysis using the software program Atlas.ti 7.0. RESULTS: Three groups of barriers emerged, related to 1) the users' knowledge of the system, 2) the users' evaluation of features of the system (source and content, format/lay out, and functionality), and 3) the interaction of the system with external factors (patient-related and environmental factors). Commonly perceived barriers were insufficient knowledge of the CDSS, irrelevant alerts, too high intensity of alerts, a lack of flexibility and learning capacity of the CDSS, a negative effect on patient communication, and the additional time and work it requires to use the CDSS. CONCLUSIONS: Multiple types of barriers may hinder the use of large-scale implemented CDSSs covering multiple disease areas in primary care. Lack of knowledge of the system is an important barrier, emphasizing the importance of a proper introduction of the system to the target group. Furthermore, barriers related to a lack of integration into daily practice seem to be of primary concern, suggesting that increasing the system's flexibility and learning capacity in order to be able to adapt the decision support to meet the varying needs of different users should be the main target of CDSS interventions.

Social media and rating sites as tools to understanding quality of care: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: Insight into the quality of health care is important for any stakeholder including patients, professionals, and governments. In light of a patient-centered approach, it is essential to assess the quality of health care from a patient's perspective, which is commonly done with surveys or focus groups. Unfortunately, these "traditional" methods have significant limitations that include social desirability bias, a time lag between experience and measurement, and difficulty reaching large groups of people. Information on social media could be of value to overcoming these limitations, since these new media are easy to use and are used by the majority of the population. Furthermore, an increasing number of people share health care experiences online or rate the quality of their health care provider on physician rating sites. The question is whether this information is relevant to determining or predicting the quality of health care. OBJECTIVE: The goal of our research was to systematically analyze the relation between information shared on social media and quality of care. METHODS: We performed a scoping review with the following goals: (1) to map the literature on the association between social media and quality of care, (2) to identify different mechanisms of this relationship, and (3) to determine a more detailed agenda for this relatively new research area. A recognized scoping review methodology was used. We developed a search strategy based on four themes: social media, patient experience, quality, and health care. Four online scientific databases were searched, articles were screened, and data extracted. Results related to the research question were described and categorized according to type of social media. Furthermore, national and international stakeholders were consulted throughout the study, to discuss and interpret results. RESULTS: Twenty-nine articles were included, of which 21 were concerned with health care rating sites. Several studies indicate a relationship between information on social media and quality of health care. However, some drawbacks exist, especially regarding the use of rating sites. For example, since rating is anonymous, rating values are not risk adjusted and therefore vulnerable to fraud. Also, ratings are often based on only a few reviews and are predominantly positive. Furthermore, people providing feedback on health care via social media are presumably not always representative for the patient population. CONCLUSIONS: Social media and particularly rating sites are an interesting new source of information about quality of care from the patient's perspective. This new source should be used to complement traditional methods, since measuring quality of care via social media has other, but not less serious, limitations. Future research should explore whether social media are suitable in practice for patients, health insurers, and governments to help them judge the quality performance of professionals and organizations.

Low-value chronic prescription of acid reducing medication among Dutch general practitioners: impact of a patient education intervention.

BACKGROUND: Dyspepsia is a commonly encountered clinical condition in Dutch general practice, which is often treated through the prescription of acid-reducing medication (ARM). However, recent studies indicate that the majority of chronic ARM users lack an indication for their use and that their long-term use is associated with adverse outcomes. We developed a patient-focussed educational intervention aiming to reduce low-value (chronic) use of ARM. METHODS: We conducted a randomized controlled study, and evaluated its effect on the low-value chronic prescription of ARM using data from a subset (n = 26) of practices from the Nivel Primary Care Database. The intervention involved distributing an educational waiting room posters and flyers informing both patients and general practitioners (GPs) regarding the appropriate indications for prescription of an ARM for dyspepsia, which also referred to an online decision aid. The interventions' effect was evaluated through calculation of the odds ratio of a patient receiving a low-value chronic ARM prescription over the second half of 2021 and 2022 (i.e. pre-intervention vs. post-intervention). RESULTS: In both the control and intervention groups, the proportion of patients receiving chronic low-value ARM prescriptions slightly increased. In the control group, it decreased from 50.3% in 2021 to 49.7% in 2022, and in the intervention group it increased from 51.3% in 2021 to 53.1% in 2022. Subsequent statistical analysis revealed no significant difference in low-value chronic prescriptions between the control and intervention groups (Odds ratio: 1.11 [0.84-1.47], p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Our educational intervention did not result in a change in the low-value chronic prescription of ARM; approximately half of the patients of the intervention and control still received low-value chronic ARM prescriptions. The absence of effect might be explained by selection bias of participating practices, awareness on the topic of chronic AMR prescriptions and the relative low proportion of low-value chronic ARM prescribing in the intervention as well as the control group compared to an assessment conducted two years prior. TRIAL REGISTRATION: 10/31/2023 NCT06108817.