Information Needs Assessment for a Medicine Ward-Focused Rounding Dashboard

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Clinical Information Systems
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Inpatient clinicians on general wards require efficient access to critical information for optimal patient care.
• Existing handoff and rounding tools may not fully meet the routine information needs of general ward medical providers.
• Development of electronic dashboards is a key strategy for improving clinical workflow and decision-making.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify the routine information needs of inpatient clinicians on general wards.
• To assess the feasibility of adapting an existing electronic dashboard from the intensive care unit (ICU) setting.
• To inform the development of a tailored electronic dashboard for general medical wards.

Main Methods:

• A survey was distributed to 104 inpatient medical providers (internal medicine and subspecialty) at Saint Marys Hospital.
• An information needs assessment was conducted by analyzing data elements from handoff and rounding tools used in ICUs and general wards.
• Survey responses were analyzed to identify important and unimportant data elements for routine clinical use.

Main Results:

• 89 unique data elements were identified from current clinical tools.
• 42 out of 104 (40%) surveys were returned.
• 56% of identified data elements were deemed important for routine use, while 27% were considered unimportant.
• No significant differences in data element importance were found between supervisory and nonsupervisory roles.

Conclusions:

• The routine information needs of general ward clinicians largely overlap with, and are a subset of, data elements used by ICU clinicians.
• An electronic dashboard developed for the critical care setting can likely be adapted for use on general wards with minimal modifications.
• This suggests a cost-effective approach to improving information delivery on general inpatient services.