Patient safety perceptions of primary care providers after implementation of an electronic medical record system.

BACKGROUND: Increasing the use of electronic medical records (EMR) has been suggested as an important strategy for improving healthcare safety. OBJECTIVE: To sequentially measure, evaluate, and respond to safety culture and practice safety concerns following EMR implementation. DESIGN: Safety culture was assessed using a validated tool (Safety Attitudes Questionnaire; SAQ), immediately following EMR implementation (T1) and at 1.5 (T2) and 2.5 (T3) years post-implementation. The SAQ was supplemented with a practice-specific assessment tool to identify safety needs and barriers. PARTICIPANTS: A large medical group practice with a primary care core of 17-18 practices, staffed by clinicians in family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine. INTERVENTIONS: Survey results were used to define and respond to areas of need between assessments with system changes and educational programs. MAIN MEASURES: Change in safety culture over time; perceived impact of EMR on practice. KEY RESULTS: Responses were received from 103 of 123 primary care providers in T1 (83.7 % response rate), 122 of 143 in T2 (85.3 %) and 142 of 181 in T3 (78.5 %). Safety culture improved over this period, with statistically significant improvement in all domains except for stress recognition. Time constraints, communications and patient adherence were perceived to be the most important safety issues. The majority of respondents in both T2 (77.9 %) and T3 (85.4 %) surveys agreed that the EMR improved their ability to provide care more safely. CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of an EMR in a large primary care practice required redesign of many organizational processes, and was associated with improvements in safety culture. Most primary care providers agreed that the EMR allowed them to provide care more safely.

The effect of computerized provider order entry on medical students' ability to write orders.

BACKGROUND: Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) is being implemented at increasing numbers of U.S. hospitals, yet the effects of CPOE on medical student education are largely unstudied. PURPOSE: The objective is to investigate the effects of CPOE on medical students' ability to write orders for patients. METHODS: One hundred forty-three medical students who began their Basic Medicine clerkship between March 2003 and April 2004 were asked to write mock admission orders for a patient with pneumonia after the 1st month of their clerkship. Students had spent the month at 1 of 3 hospitals: 1 using CPOE, 1 paper orders, and 1 that began using CPOE midway through this study. Admission orders were scored for the presence of specific orders and features. RESULTS: One hundred twenty students attempted to write admission orders. Students who trained at hospitals using CPOE and those who trained at hospitals using paper orders included expected basic, lifesaving, and higher level orders at similar rates. No significant differences in order clarity or inclusion of unnecessary orders were found for the 2 groups. No significant differences were found when controlling for school year and 4 modifiable rotation features. CONCLUSIONS: When admission order completeness and quality for medical students who trained at hospitals using CPOE were compared to those who trained using handwritten orders, no important differences were found.

Implications of academic medicine's failure to recognize clinical excellence.

OBJECTIVE: To better understand the implications of inadequately recognizing clinical excellence in academia by exploring the perspectives of clinically excellent faculty within prominent American departments of medicine. DESIGN: Qualitative study. SETTING: 8 academic institutions. PARTICIPANTS: 24 clinically excellent department of medicine physicians. METHODS: Between March 1 and May 31, 2007, investigators conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 24 clinically excellent physicians at leading academic institutions. Interview transcripts were independently coded by two investigators and compared for agreement. Content analysis identified themes related to clinical excellence in academia. RESULTS: Twenty informants (83%) were Associate Professors or Professors, 8 (33%) were females, and the physicians hailed from a wide range of internal medicine specialties. The mean percent effort spent in clinical care by the physicians was 48%. The five domains that emerged related to academic medicine's failure to recognize clinical excellence were: (1) low morale and prestige among clinicians, (2) less than excellent patient care, (3) loss of talented clinicians, (4) a lack of commitment to improve patient care systems, and (5) fewer excellent clinician role models to inspire trainees. CONCLUSIONS: If academic medical centers fail to recognize clinical excellence among its physicians, they may be doing a disservice to the patients that they pledge to serve. It is hoped that initiatives aiming to measure clinical performance in our academic medical centers will translate into meaningful recognition for those achieving excellence such that outstanding clinicians may feel valued and decide to stay in academia.

Active bed management by hospitalists and emergency department throughput.

BACKGROUND: When emergency departments are overcrowded, ambulances are diverted. Interventions focused primarily on emergency departments have had limited success. OBJECTIVE: To discover whether an active bed management, quality improvement initiative could reduce ambulance diversion hours and emergency department throughput times. DESIGN: Pre-post study that compared institutional data from November 2006 to February 2007 (intervention period) with data from November 2005 to February 2006 (control period). SETTING: Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland. PATIENTS: All adult patients registered in the emergency department during the study periods. INTERVENTION: Active bed management is a hospitalist-led, multifaceted intervention that consists of proactive management of hospital and departmental resources, including twice-daily bed management rounds in the intensive care unit and regular visits to the emergency department to assess congestion and flow; assignment of all admissions to the department of medicine and facilitating transfer from the emergency department to the appropriate care setting; and support from the "bed director," who can mobilize additional resources in real time to augment hospital capacity to address emergency department throughput problems. MEASUREMENTS: Emergency department throughput times and ambulance diversion hours. RESULTS: The emergency department census was 8.8% higher during the intervention period than in the control period (17 573 patients vs. 16 148 patients). Throughput for patients who were admitted decreased by 98 minutes (SD, 10) (from 458 minutes in the control period to 360 minutes during the intervention period). Throughput for patients who were not admitted did not change (274 minutes vs. 269 minutes). The percentage of hours that the emergency department was on "yellow alert" (ambulance diversion because of emergency department crowding) decreased 6%, and the percentage of hours on "red alert" (ambulance diversion due to lack of intensive care unit beds in the hospital) decreased 27%. Staffing, length of stay, case-mix index, intensive care unit transfer rates, and mortality rates were stable across the 2 periods. LIMITATIONS: Pre-post designs are less effective than randomized, controlled trials on the study design hierarchy, and unidentified external forces may have influenced the results. The study was done at a single hospital, and the findings may not be generalizable to other institutions. CONCLUSION: Emergency department throughput and diversion status improved with the implementation of an active bed management process coordinated by hospitalists.

Prioritizing Patient Safety Efforts in Office Practice Settings.

OBJECTIVES: Outpatient care settings face unique risks of adverse events and medico-legal liability, often worsened by inconsistent processes and fragmented care. Health systems are increasingly providing integrated care that includes outpatient care, but models of how to systematically target medico-legal risk in office practices are largely absent. Innovative and scalable efforts are needed to guide large health systems in their approach to outpatient safety. METHODS: A malpractice consortium consisting of five large health care delivery systems identified that its ambulatory care cases (including office practices, outpatient hospital settings, and emergency departments) account for 30% to 35% of annual medical malpractice costs, and missed or delayed diagnoses account for approximately 50% of office practice liability risk. To further understand risks and opportunities in office-based practices, a team of patient safety and loss prevention professionals conducted site visits to seven outpatient-affiliated sites of the five health systems from January to March 2016 and interviewed several key informant members of physician, nursing, and administrative leadership. RESULTS: We identified eight common patient safety risk domains based on analysis of eight sets of group interviews. Risk domains were then prioritized by members of the consortium leadership using scoring criteria that we developed based on existing risk assessment and prioritization approaches. The method helped identify communication and follow-up of diagnostic test results in the outpatient setting as the single most important risk area to target improvement efforts. CONCLUSIONS: A targeted approach to identify a single high-risk area led to development of dedicated teams to conduct local patient safety improvement projects at the affiliated health systems and for sharing lessons learned. Similar efforts elsewhere could lead to safety improvements in office practices at other large health systems.

Pilot study comparing patients' valuation of health-care services with Medicare's relative value units.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Physician reimbursement for services and thus income are largely determined by the Medicare Resource-Based Relative Value Scale. Patients' assessment of the value of physician services has never been considered in the calculation. This study sought to compare patients' valuation of health-care services to Medicare's relative value unit (RVU) assessments and to discover patients' perceptions about the relative differences in incomes across physician specialties. DESIGN: Cross-sectional survey. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Individuals in select outpatient waiting areas at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. METHODS: Data collection included the use of a visual analog 'value scale' wherein participants assigned value to 10 specific physician-dependent health-care services. Informants were also asked to estimate the annualized incomes of physicians in specialties related to the above-mentioned services. Comparisons of (i) the 'patient valuation RVUs' with actual Medicare RVUs, and (ii) patients' estimations of physician income with actual income were explored using t-tests. OUTCOMES: Of the 206 eligible individuals, 186 (90%) agreed to participate. Participants assigned a significantly higher mean value to 7 of the 10 services compared with Medicare RVUs (P<0.001) and the range in values assigned by participants was much smaller than Medicare's (a factor of 2 vs. 22). With the exception of primary care, respondents estimated that physicians earn significantly less than their actual income (all P<0.001) and the differential across specialties was thought to be much smaller (estimate: $88,225, actual: $146,769). CONCLUSION: In this pilot study, patients' estimations of the value health-care services were markedly different from the Medicare RVU system. Mechanisms for incorporating patients' valuation of services rendered by physicians may be warranted.

Do fears of malpractice litigation influence teaching behaviors?

BACKGROUND: Medical malpractice is prominently positioned in the consciousness of American physicians, and the perceived threat of malpractice litigation may push physicians to practice defensively and alter their teaching behaviors. PURPOSE: The purposes of this study were to characterize the attitudes of academic medical faculty toward malpractice litigation and to identify teaching behaviors associated with fear of malpractice litigation. METHODS: We surveyed 270 full-time clinically active physicians in the Department of Medicine at a large academic medical center. The survey assessed physicians' attitudes toward malpractice issues, fear of malpractice litigation, and self-reported teaching behaviors associated with concerns about litigation. RESULTS: Two hundred and fifteen physicians responded (80%). Faculty scored an average of 25.5 +/- 6.9 (range = 6-42, higher scores indicate greater fear) on a reliable malpractice fear scale. Younger age (Spearman's rho = 0.19, p = .02) and greater time spent in clinical activities (rho = 0.26, p < .001) were correlated with higher scores on the Malpractice Fear Scale. Faculty reported that because of the perceived prevalence of lawsuits and claims made against physicians, they spend more time writing clinical notes for patients seen by learners (74%), give learners less autonomy in patient care (44%), and limit opportunities for learners to perform clinical procedures (32%) and deliver bad news to patients (33%). Faculty with higher levels of fear on the Malpractice Fear Scale were more likely to report changing their teaching behaviors because of this perceived threat (rho = 0.38, p < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Physicians report changes in teaching behaviors because of concerns about malpractice litigation. Although concerns about malpractice may promote increased supervision and positive role modeling, they may also limit important educational opportunities for learners. These results may serve to heighten awareness to the fact that teaching behaviors and decisions may be influenced by the malpractice climate.

Building a Medicaid Ambulatory Complex Care Program Within an Urban Medical Home.

Five percent of Medicaid patients account for 50% of total costs. Preventable costs are often incurred by patients with complex medical, behavioral, and social needs who disproportionately utilize acute care services. Evidence for design, implementation, and evaluation of complex care programs in the urban Medicaid population is lacking. The article provides a description of a complex care program (CCP), challenges, and early outcomes based on a pre-post evaluation. The CCP was located within an existing urban medical home. Patients were eligible if they lived within 10 miles of the clinic and had at least 2 inpatient visits and/or 3 emergency room visits within the prior 6 months. Ambulatory Care Groups® were used to predict estimated total costs of patients, who were included if potential cost savings exceeded $5000. Patient experience and quality of care were assessed using validated measures and costs. Return on investment was calculated based on investment and cost savings. Costs include visits (clinic, specialty, and emergency room), hospital admissions, medications, tests and services, as well as salary and benefits of clinical staff. Eighty-six of 211 eligible patients (41%) were enrolled during the first 18 months of the pilot program. There were positive trends in quality metrics and patient satisfaction. The pre-post evaluation demonstrated a reduction in emergency room visits and hospitalizations (67% and 65%, respectively), which resulted in a 2.2:1 return on investment. This article offers lessons learned to colleagues considering population health approaches in the care of high-risk Medicaid patients.

Strategic Review Process for an Accountable Care Organization and Emerging Accountable Care Best Practices.

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), like other care entities, must be strategic about which initiatives they support in the quest for higher value. This article reviews the current strategic planning process for the Johns Hopkins Medicine Alliance for Patients (JMAP), a Medicare Shared Savings Program Track 1 ACO. It reviews the 3 focus areas for the 2017 strategic review process - (1) optimizing care coordination for complex, at-risk patients, (2) post-acute care, and (3) specialty care integration - reviewing cost savings and quality improvement opportunities, associated best practices from the literature, and opportunities to leverage and advance existing ACO and health system efforts in each area. It then reviews the ultimate selection of priorities for the coming year and early thoughts on implementation. After the robust review process, key stakeholders voted to select interventions targeted at care coordination, post-acute care, and specialty integration including Part B drug and imaging costs. The interventions selected incorporate a mixture of enhancing current ACO initiatives, working collaboratively and synergistically on other health system initiatives, and taking on new projects deemed targeted, cost-effective, and manageable in scope. The annual strategic review has been an essential and iterative process based on performance data and informed by the collective experience of other organizations. The process allows for an evidence-based strategic plan for the ACO in pursuit of the best care for patients.

Morbidity and mortality conference, grand rounds, and the ACGME's core competencies.

Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) Conferences are an Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) mandated educational series that occur regularly at all institutions that have residency training programs. The potential for learning from medical errors, complications, and unanticipated outcomes is immense--provided that the focus is on education, as opposed to culpability. The education innovation described in this manuscript is the manner in which we have used the ACGME Outcome Project's 6 core competencies as the structure upon which the cases discussed at our M&M conference are framed. When presented at grand rounds in a novel format, M&M conference has not only maintained support for the quality improvement efforts in the Department, but has served to improve the educational impact of the conference.

Interdisciplinary medical, nursing, and administrator education in practice: the Johns Hopkins experience.

Reforming graduate medical, nursing and health administrators' education to include the core competencies of interdisciplinary teamwork and quality improvement (QI) techniques is a key strategy to improve quality in hospital settings. Practicing clinicians are best positioned in these settings to understand systems issues and craft potential solutions. The authors describe how, in ten months during 2004 and 2005 the school of medicine, the school of nursing, and an administrative residency program, all at Johns Hopkins University, implemented and evaluated the Achieving Competency Today II Program (ACT II), a structured and interdisciplinary approach to learning QI that was piloted at various sites around the United States. Six teams of learners participated, each consisting of a medical, nursing, and administrative resident. The importance of interdisciplinary participation in planning QI projects, the value of the patient's perspective on systems issues, and the value of a system's perspective in crafting solutions to issues all proved to be valuable lessons. Challenges were encountered throughout the program, such as (1) participants' difficulties in balancing competing academic, personal and clinical responsibilities, (2) difficulties in achieving the intended goals of a broad curriculum, (3) barriers to openly discussing interdisciplinary team process and dynamics, and (4) the need to develop faculty expertise in systems thinking and QI. In spite of these challenges steps have been identified to further enhance and develop interdisciplinary education within this academic setting.

Establishing an Ambulatory Medicine Quality and Safety Oversight Structure: Leveraging the Fractal Model.

PROBLEM: Academic health systems face challenges in the governance and oversight of quality and safety efforts across their organizations. Ambulatory practices, which are growing in number, size, and complexity, face particular challenges in these areas. APPROACH: In February 2014, leaders at Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM) implemented a governance, oversight, and accountability structure for quality and safety efforts across JHM ambulatory practices. This model was based on the fractal approach, which balances independence and interdependence and provides horizontal and vertical support. It set expectations of accountability at all levels from the Board of Trustees to frontline staff and featured a cascading structure that reached all units and ambulatory practices. This model leveraged an Ambulatory Quality Council led by a physician and nurse dyad to provide the infrastructure to share best practices, continuously improve, and define accountable local leaders. OUTCOMES: This model was incorporated into the quality and safety infrastructure across JHM. Improved outcomes in the domains of patient safety/risk reduction, externally reported quality measures, patient care/experience, and value have been demonstrated. An additional benefit was an improvement in Medicaid value-based purchasing metrics, which are linked to several million dollars of revenue. NEXT STEPS: As this model matures, it will serve as a mechanism to align quality standards and programs across regional, national, and international partners and to provide a clear quality structure as new practices join the health system. Future efforts will link this model to JHM's academic mission, enhancing education to address Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education core competencies.

The effect of computerized provider order entry on medical student clerkship experiences.

OBJECTIVE: To describe medical students' attitudes toward placing orders during training, and the effect of computerized provider order entry (CPOE) on their learning experiences. DESIGN: Prospective, controlled study of all 143 Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine students who began the Basic Medicine clerkship between March 2003 and April 2004 at one of three teaching hospitals: one using CPOE, one paper orders, and one that began using CPOE midway through this study. MEASUREMENTS: Survey of students at the start and after the first month of the clerkship. RESULTS: Ninety-six percent of students responded. Students expressed a desire to place 100% of orders for their patients. Ninety-five percent of students believed that placing orders helps students learn what tests and treatments patients need. Eighty-four percent reported that being unavailable due to conferences and teaching sessions was a significant barrier to participating in the ordering process. Students at hospitals using CPOE reported placing significantly fewer of their patients' follow-up orders compared to students at hospitals using paper orders (25% vs. 50%, p < 0.01) and were more likely to report that their resident or intern did not want them to enter orders (40% vs. 16%, p < 0.01). Comparisons of students at hospitals using CPOE to each other showed that these differences were attributable to one of the hospitals. Thirty-two percent of students at both hospitals using CPOE reported that the extra length of time required for housestaff to review their orders in the computer was a significant barrier. CONCLUSION: Hospitals need to ensure that the educational potential of medical students' clinical experiences is maximized when implementing CPOE.

The intersection between clinical excellence and role modeling in medicine.

BACKGROUND: Role modeling is an integral component of medical education. The literature suggests that being a clinically excellent academic physician and serving as a role model for trainees are integrally related. PURPOSE: To explore the relationship between being considered clinically excellent and being considered an effective role model. METHODS: Two independent surveys were administered to clinically active faculty (asked to name clinically excellent colleagues) and internal medicine residents (asked to name faculty role models). We compared frequency counts of clinically excellent faculty mentioned and frequency counts of role models mentioned by respondents. Spearman correlations and odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals were used to assess the relationship between the responses. RESULTS: A total of 39 of 66 faculty (59%) and 45 of 50 residents (90%) responded. There were 31 faculty members judged to be clinically excellent and 67 faculty identified as role models. Thirty faculty members appeared on both lists. There was a moderately high correlation between these groups (Spearman correlation coefficient  =  0.54, P < .001). Faculty members who were among those named as clinically excellent by their peers were more likely to be named 3 or more times as a role model by trainees (odds ratio, 24.6; confidence interval, 2.9-207). CONCLUSIONS: This study tested and confirmed the correlation between clinical excellence and role modeling, illustrating the value of these faculty members at teaching hospitals.

Advantages and challenges of working as a clinician in an academic department of medicine: academic clinicians' perspectives.

BACKGROUND: The provision of high-quality clinical care is critical to the mission of academic and nonacademic clinical settings and is of foremost importance to academic and nonacademic physicians. Concern has been increasingly raised that the rewards systems at most academic institutions may discourage those with a passion for clinical care over research or teaching from staying in academia. In addition to the advantages afforded by academic institutions, academic physicians may perceive important challenges, disincentives, and limitations to providing excellent clinical care. To better understand these views, we conducted a qualitative study to explore the perspectives of clinical faculty in prominent departments of medicine. METHODS: Between March and May 2007, 2 investigators conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 24 clinically excellent internal medicine physicians at 8 academic institutions across the nation. Transcripts were independently coded by 2 investigators and compared for agreement. Content analysis was performed to identify emerging themes. RESULTS: Twenty interviewees (83%) were associate professors or professors, 33% were women, and participants represented a wide range of internal medicine subspecialties. Mean time currently spent in clinical care by the physicians was 48%. Domains that emerged related to faculty's perception of clinical care in the academic setting included competing obligations, teamwork and collaboration, types of patients and productivity expectations, resources for clinical services, emphasis on discovery, and bureaucratic challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Expert clinicians at academic medical centers perceive barriers to providing excellent patient care related to competing demands on their time, competing academic missions, and bureaucratic challenges. They also believe there are differences in the types of patients seen in academic settings compared with those in the private sector, that there is a "public" nature in their clinical work, that productivity expectations are likely different from those of private practitioners, and that resource allocation both facilitates and limits excellent care in the academic setting. These findings have important implications for patients, learners, and faculty and academic leaders, and suggest challenges as well as opportunities in fostering clinical medicine at academic institutions.

Creating an academy of clinical excellence at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center: a 3-year experience.

Academic health centers (AHCs) are committed to the tripartite missions of research, education, and patient care. Promotion decisions at many AHCs focus predominantly on research accomplishments, and some members of the community remain concerned about how to reward clinicians who excel in, and spend a majority of their time, caring for patients. Many clinically excellent physicians contribute substantively to all aspects of the mission by collaborating with researchers (either through intellectual discourse or enrolling participants in trials), by serving as role models for trainees with respect to ideal caring and practice, and by attracting patients to the institution. Not giving fair and appreciative recognition to these clinically excellent faculty places AHCs at risk of losing them. The Center for Innovative Medicine at Johns Hopkins set out to address this concern by defining, measuring, and rewarding clinical excellence. Prior to this initiative, little attention was directed toward the "bright spots" of excellence in patient care at Johns Hopkins Bayview. Using a scholarly approach, the authors launched a new academy; this manuscript describes the history, creation, and ongoing activities of the Miller-Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence at Johns Hopkins University Bayview Medical Center. While membership in the academy is honorific, the members of this working academy are committed to influencing institutional culture as they collaborate on advocacy, scholarship, and educational initiatives.

Documentation of code status and discussion of goals of care in gravely ill hospitalized patients.

BACKGROUND: Timely discussions about goals of care in critically ill patients have been shown to be important. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective chart review over 2 years (2003-2004) of patients admitted to our medical service who were classified as "expected to die." Charts were evaluated for do-not-resuscitate (DNR) documentation and discussions of goals of care. Detailed chart reviews for demographic information, cause of death, site of death, length of stay, and duration of resuscitation attempt were performed. RESULTS: Of 497 charts identified, 434 (87.3%) had a DNR on file at the time of death. After exclusion of patients who died in less than 24 hours, 18 no-DNR charts remained. Seven noted a decision to continue aggressive care and 11 had no code status discussion documented. Younger patients and patients with cardiovascular disease were less likely to have a DNR. Resuscitation times were longer in the no-discussion group. All patients who died without a DNR died in the intensive care unit. Seventy-six percent of discussions were done by medicine housestaff. CONCLUSIONS: Although the overall rate of DNR documentation was high, several trends emerged. Medicine housestaff in the intensive care unit would be a logical group to target for an educational intervention to address these discrepancies.

An innovative approach to supporting hospitalist physicians towards academic success.

BACKGROUND: Academic hospitalist physicians face significant challenges that may threaten their chances for successful and timely promotions, such as heavy clinical workloads, limited training in research, and relatively few experienced mentors in their field. The appreciable growth of hospital medicine groups in recent years, as has occurred at our institution, compounds the predicament by diluting the limited resources that are available to support these physicians. METHODS: A needs assessment was followed by the development of specific objectives for the division and for individual members of the division related to academic success. The resulting 3-pronged strategy to support the academic success of our group was based on securing strong mentorship, investing requisite resources, and committing to recruit fellowship-trained new faculty. RESULTS: To date, the initiative has resulted in an increased number of peer-reviewed publication and grants, as well as national leadership roles for division members.