The Nature and Variability of Automated Practice Alerts Derived from Electronic Health Records in a U.S. Nationwide Critical Care Research Network

Abstract

Rationale: The nature, variability, and extent of early warning clinical practice alerts derived from automated query of electronic health records (e-alerts) currently used in acute care settings for clinical care or research is unknown. Objectives: To describe e-alerts in current use in acute care settings at medical centers participating in a nationwide critical care research network. Methods: We surveyed investigators at 38 institutions involved in the National Institutes of Health–funded Clinical Trials Network for the Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Measurements and Main Results: Thirty sites completed the survey (79% response rate). All sites used electronic health record systems. Epic Systems was used at 56% of sites; the others used alternate commercially available vendors or homegrown systems. Respondents at 57% of sites represented in this survey used e-alerts. All but 1 of these 17 sites used an e-alert for early detection of sepsis-related syndromes, and 35% used an e-alert for pneumonia. E-alerts were triggered by abnormal laboratory values (37%), vital signs (37%), or radiology reports (15%) and were used about equally for clinical decision support and research. Only 59% of sites with e-alerts have evaluated them either for accuracy or for validity. Conclusions: A majority of the research network sites participating in this survey use e-alerts for early notification of potential threats to hospitalized patients; however, there was significant variability in the nature of e-alerts between institutions. Use of one common electronic health record vendor at more than half of the participating sites suggests that it may be possible to standardize e-alerts across multiple sites in research networks, particularly among sites using the same medical record platform.