Code status and resuscitation options in the electronic health record.

AIM: The advance discussion and documentation of code-status is important in preventing undesired cardiopulmonary resuscitation and related end of life interventions. Code-status documentation remains infrequent and paper-based, which limits its usefulness. This study evaluates a tool to document code-status in the electronic health records at a large teaching hospital, and analyzes the corresponding data. METHODS: Encounter data for patients admitted to the Medical Center were collected over a period of 12 months (01-APR-2012-31-MAR-2013) and the code-status attribute was tracked for individual patients. The code-status data were analyzed separately for adult and pediatric patient populations. We considered 131,399 encounters for 83,248 adult patients and 80,778 encounters for 55,656 pediatric patients in this study. RESULTS: 71% of the adult patients and 30% of the pediatric patients studied had a documented code-status. Age and severity of illness influenced the decision to document code-status. Demographics such as gender, race, ethnicity, and proximity of primary residence were also associated with the documentation of code-status. CONCLUSION: Absence of a recorded code-status may result in unnecessary interventions. Code-status in paper charts may be difficult to access in cardiopulmonary arrest situations and may result in unnecessary and unwanted interventions and procedures. Documentation of code-status in electronic records creates a readily available reference for care providers.

Experience in implementing inpatient clinical note capture via a provider order entry system.

Care providers' adoption of computer-based health-related documentation ("note capture") tools has been limited, even though such tools have the potential to facilitate information gathering and to promote efficiency of clinical charting. The authors have developed and deployed a computerized note-capture tool that has been made available to end users through a care provider order entry (CPOE) system already in wide use at Vanderbilt. Overall note-capture tool usage between January 1, 1999, and December 31, 2001, increased substantially, both in the number of users and in their frequency of use. This case report is provided as an example of how an existing care provider order entry environment can facilitate clinical end-user adoption of a computer-assisted documentation tool-a concept that may seem counterintuitive to some.