Improving Judicious Use of Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia Testing Through Electronic Health Record-Based...

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is an immune-mediated drug reaction that can cause thromboembolism in the setting of thrombocytopenia. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)-based assay to screen for HIT antibodies (HAb) is available but has relatively low specificity and a correspondingly high false positive rate. The 4Ts score has been validated to determine the pretest probability of HIT. The authors hypothesized that an electronic health record (EHR)-based clinical decision support (CDS) tool incorporating the 4Ts score would reduce the volume of HAb orders.

After implementing a CDS tool into the EHR, the researchers retrospectively evaluated the impact from November 2019 to October 2021, compared to a preintervention period (January to October 2019). The primary outcome was average tests per month. Secondary outcomes included rates of tests ordered per total inpatient encounters and proportion of HAb sent despite low 4Ts score in the postintervention study period.

Of 1,833 HAb sent during the study period, 1,217 occurred in the postintervention period. In the postintervention period compared with the preintervention period, the average orders per month was 50.5 (standard deviation [SD] 9.7) vs. 61.6 (SD 7.2) (p = 0.003), and the order incidence rate was 8.0 per 1,000 patient encounters postintervention vs. 9.2 per 1,000 patient encounters preintervention (rate ratio [RR] 0.87, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.79-0.96, p = 0.002). Postintervention, 252 (20.7%) had a 4Ts score calculated as low probability, 759 (62.4%) as intermediate probability, and 131 (10.8%) as high probability, and 75 had no associated 4Ts score.

Implementation of a simple CDS tool reduced the rate of HAb orders, reducing unnecessary HAb testing.