Integration of quality assurance activities into a computerized patient data management system in an intensive care...

A prototype computer-based patient data management system (PDMS) was developed for a surgery-anesthesiology intensive care unit (ICU) to reduce the time and staff needed to implement quality assurance (QA) functions. Goals of the system were to make QA functions routine and minimally intrusive to the daily operation of the ICU. PDMS collects general data (eg, admissions and discharges, lengths of stay, and bed utilization rates) and specialized data (eg, specific indicators) unique to the ICU and performs prospective monitoring for the occurrence of specific events (occurrence screening) and retrospective examinations of patient records (targeted reviews). Preliminary results suggest that PDMS facilitates the acquisition and analysis of QA data and reduces the time needed to acquire these data. Research to validate these claims and efforts to improve and expand the prototype system with a permanent production system are in progress.