Demonstrating the Potential for Electronic Health Record Interoperability to Improve Patient Safety Research of Older Adults Over the Acute Episode of Care
Background
Older adults with multiple chronic conditions (MCCs) are frequently hospitalized and are at high risk for adverse events (AEs) due to fragmented care. By helping patients find, retrieve, and share their electronic health records (EHRs) using new standards and policies, we aim to improve their health outcomes.
Study Goals
Our study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is partnered with two studies focused on reducing AEs during acute care.
We aim to enhance our digital tools to support patient EHR sharing with research teams. We will streamline data-sharing processes, develop methods to harmonize and analyze EHR data, and study the effects of care fragmentation and unrecognized geriatric conditions on patient safety during acute care.
Our Approach
We will utilize the Sync-for-Science (S4S) Procure project and the MCC e-Care Plan project to enhance our existing web-based application and secure cloud technology. Our multidisciplinary team will use a rigorous user-centered design process to understand user needs to define requirements for EHR sharing.
We will implement and iteratively refine workflows through mixed methods to ensure effective data sharing. Furthermore, we will develop analytic methods for harmonizing and analyzing EHR data, including using natural language processing (NLP) to identify unrecognized geriatric conditions.
Results
We will conduct a comprehensive evaluation to establish best practices for implementing this intervention in different healthcare settings. By studying the impact of care fragmentation and unrecognized geriatric conditions on AEs, our study will provide valuable insights into improving patient safety and post-discharge monitoring for older adults.
Dissemination
This study represents a collaborative effort to advance patient safety and care quality. Our findings and contributions to two open-source projects will be shared widely to benefit other studies and promote broad adoption of our methods and tools.