The Utilization of Evidence-Based Order Sets and Care Plans to Support Clinical Decision-Making

OBJECTIVES: The evidence-based Order Sets and Care Planning solutions implemented at EHS to enable an analysis of real-world Order Sets and Care Plans utilization.

METHODS: EHS decided to focus the analysis on the admission process for its pediatric patient population. We examined data from a two-year period that included over 1 million unique encounters and 144,000 unique inpatient admissions across 16 facilities.

By connecting a cloud-based content management tool with EHS’ EHR system through bidirectional integration, EHS SMEs were able to customize sets of orders and provide contextual guidance whenever necessary. This enabled EHS to implement their customized version of evidence-based Order Sets, known as EBM (Evidence-Based Medicine) Order Sets, incorporating the latest research, guidelines, and best practices. As a result, EHS empowered its clinicians to deliver optimal care to their patients by providing a tool that helped improve ordering efficiency, reducing clinician time and burnout and offering evidence-based guidance for more informed decisions.

RESULTS: EHS found time-saving benefits, increased efficiency, and the establishment of standardized, high-quality care. A sensitivity analysis was conducted assuming a range of typical ordering session durations of 10, 15 and 20 minutes and potential impact of 0.5 instances time savings for the 10,730 control admissions was estimated. An estimate for 10-minute sessions was reduction in the average number ordering instances by 0.5, which is approximately 894 hours of physicians’ time could potentially be saved if all physicians opted to use the “Admit to”Order Sets when admitting their patients.

CONCLUSIONS: The evidence-based Order Sets and Care Plans have played a significant role in delivering tangible benefits and establishing a new benchmark for high-quality, standardized care at EHS. They are critical in helping to ensure a consistent level of patient care, improving efficiency, helping to reduce costs, and help support clinicians in achieving overall improvements in patient outcomes