Examining the Durability of an Inexpensive Intervention for Improving Point-of-care Ultrasound Documentation Rates

Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) has become a widely used diagnostic tool in emergency departments (EDs), and proper documentation is essential for both patient safety and reimbursement. POCUS is often underdocumented, and therefore, underbilled, by emergency medicine physicians. The absence of POCUS documentation can result in significant revenue loss for both providers and hospital administration.

This study is a follow-up study to the manuscript published by Lahham et al. and primarily examines POCUS documentation rates for a 15-month billing period following the initial intervention of a personalized e-mail reminder. Data included rates of documented and phantom scans from three separate 11-day periods (April 2019, July 2019, and July 2020) after the performance feedback intervention in March 2019.

Documentation rates steadily declined from April 2019 to July 2020 following the intervention, with the highest success rate being immediately after the e-mail intervention.

This study demonstrates that there is limited durability to a single e-mail reminder as an intervention to improve POCUS documentation in the ED and suggests that there is a need for repeated interventions to prevent deterioration of documentation rates.