Protective Effects of Increased EHR-Mediated Information Sharing Within- and Between-Healthcare Teams on Patient...

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) provide a common repository for patient information, and while many challenges persist, EHRs allow asynchronous coordination among healthcare professionals (HCPs). Such coordination is inherently challenging, as large multidisciplinary teams, or teams-of-teams, of HCPs jointly manage complex patient care. These teams-of-teams naturally fit under the Multiteam System (MTS) framework, where evidence suggests that both stronger within- and between-team communication improves overall team performance. Yet little is known how about these patterns of information sharing mediated through the EHR correlate with patient outcomes. We extracted over 53.9 million EHR access logs for 482 patients to construct novel within- and between-team information sharing measures which were then used to predict future emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations admitted through the ED. These network measures showed both statistical and practical significance, suggesting that this modifiable dimension of teamwork-information sharing through the EHR-could reduce acute care utilization.