Salt Lake City based-Intermountain Healthcare has been trialing a real-time, clinical decision-making digital tool, which has shown impressive results, according to a study released March 8.
The research, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, showed that when the tool, called ePNa, was used in community hospitals on emergency department pneumonia patients, there was a 38 percent decrease in mortality.
The ePNa system is a system embedded within the EHR that pulls real-time and historical data on pneumonia patients to guide clinical decision-making, including diagnosis, site of care and risk stratification. The system was deployed in 16 community hospitals between December 2017 to June 2019, which had 6,848 pneumonia cases throughout that time period.
After the tool was used, Intermountain saw a 38 percent decrease in mortality 30 days after being diagnosed with pneumonia, decreased time between admission to the ED and first round of antibiotics treatment as well as a 17 percent increase in discharge from the ED.
"In giving clinicians a real-time assessment tool that pulls together over 50 factors that can determine how a patient will do with pneumonia, our study found that clinicians were able to make better treatment decisions with this resource," said Nathan Dean, MD, section chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Intermountain Medical Center in a release. "Even if [physicians] don't follow the recommendation, decision-making is more consistent with best practices."