Interdisciplinary Optimization of Admission Documentation: Reducing the Bloat

Moving toward the electronic health record increases the quality of information gathered. However, nurses argue that the electronic health record is an added burden. The aim of this study was to evaluate the removal of duplicative or unnecessary fields and reordering fields on the admission form to increase documentation that is meaningful to the patient story. A team of approximately 60 interdisciplinary clinicians engaged in document review to evaluate the importance of each field and removal or modification based on those findings. After a review of the 251 fields, the authors reduced the form to 124 fields, and the percentage of unfields by 31%. After outlier removal, the average time to complete the admission form decreased by 2.88 minutes. The new form showed a reduction of 36.71% of the use of the free text advance directive. Additionally, nurses' perceptions of the form significantly improved from pretest to posttest in terms of satisfaction with the form, time to complete, usability and usefulness, question flow, and length of the form. This study shows that an interdisciplinary team can effectively work together to optimize the Adult Admission History Form, increasing the quality of documentation while reducing the time to complete.