DENVER—Data could be the key to improving population health in inflammatory bowel disease, and Phoenix Children’s Hospital is leveraging a real-time dashboard to do just that, according to research presented at the 2023 Crohn’s & Colitis Congress.
The dashboard, developed by a team of specialists from the hospital’s IBD Clinic, was designed to automate the data-gathering process for the clinic’s weekly pre-visit planning (PVP) session, while also providing visibility into the patient population and optimizing processes including documentation, order entry and timely follow-up.
“Overall, the real-time dashboard has been a major success for the hospital and has proven itself to be a powerful tool in improving process measures and patient outcomes,” said lead investigator Robert Lloyd Jr., DO, a pediatric gastroenterology resident at Phoenix Children’s. “By providing real-time data visibility, improved process automation and reallocated staff hours, the dashboard is making a positive impact on the quality of care at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and the ICN [Improve Care Now] network as a whole.”
The ICN network is a global collaboration of more than 100 centers, including Phoenix Children's, that seeks to improve IBD patient care facilities. Dr. Lloyd and his co-investigators have taken ICN recommendations–for example, seeing patients within 200 days and Physician Global Assessment documentation–and synthesized those with data from the Allscripts electronic medical record.
Explaining how the group uses the dashboard to improve care, Dr. Lloyd said, “the dashboard retrieves data based on documentation. Patients with IBD are identified with a charted [International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision] diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or indeterminate colitis. The data are then gathered and presented for live review at weekly PVP.”
According to Dr. Lloyd, the results have been remarkable (abstract P004). The percentage of patients with follow-up orders placed increased from 61% in 2021 to 99% as of Oct. 17, 2022. In addition, the Physician Global Assessment, which had been recorded in 81% of encounters, is now recorded in 92%. The number of patients seen within 200 days also has increased, from 82% to 89%, and 91% of patients with active disease have been seen.
Importantly, Dr. Lloyd said, the improvements in data visibility and process automation have enabled staff to reallocate their time to other patient care needs.
“At this point, we can definitely say that we have saved man-hours because this is automated,” Dr. Lloyd said. “We used to do a lot of this manually without really realizing it, and now those man-hours are reallocated to different areas of patient care.
“There are two sides of medicine,” he added. “As physicians, we like to talk more about the patient outcomes, but the business side of it, too, is saving money.”
As a proof of concept, he said the team believes the dashboard could be used to improve care for other specialties and chronic diseases. But first, Dr. Lloyd said, the researchers plan to examine patient outcomes, including the number of patients in remission and on medication.
“Our hope,” he said, “is that in May of 2023, one year from the start of the dashboard, our data analysis will demonstrate improved patient outcomes.”
—Chase Doyle
