Characterizing communication patterns among members of the clinical care team to deliver breast cancer treatment.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
; 27(2): 236-243, 2020 02 01.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-31682267
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Research to date focused on quantifying team collaboration has relied on identifying shared patients but does not incorporate the major role of communication patterns. The goal of this study was to describe the patterns and volume of communication among care team members involved in treating breast cancer patients. MATERIALS ANDMETHODS:
We analyzed 4 years of communications data from the electronic health record between care team members at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Our cohort of patients diagnosed with breast cancer was identified using the VUMC tumor registry. We classified each care team member participating in electronic messaging by their institutional role and classified physicians by specialty. To identify collaborative patterns, we modeled the data as a social network.RESULTS:
Our cohort of 1181 patients was the subject of 322 424 messages sent in 104 210 unique communication threads by 5620 employees. On average, each patient was the subject of 88.2 message threads involving 106.4 employees. Each employee, on average, sent 72.9 messages and was connected to 24.6 collaborators. Nurses and physicians were involved in 98% and 44% of all message threads, respectively. DISCUSSION ANDCONCLUSION:
Our results suggest that many providers in our study may experience a high volume of messaging work. By using data routinely generated through interaction with the electronic health record, we can begin to evaluate how to iteratively implement and assess initiatives to improve the efficiency of care coordination and reduce unnecessary messaging work across all care team roles.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Patient Care Team
/
Breast Neoplasms
/
Communication
/
Electronic Health Records
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Am Med Inform Assoc
Journal subject:
INFORMATICA MEDICA
Year:
2020
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States