scholarly journals Toward Standardized Monitoring of Patients With Chronic Diseases in Primary Care Using Electronic Medical Records: Development of a Tool by Adapted Delphi Procedure

10.2196/14483 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. e14483
Author(s):  
Leandra Falck ◽  
Marco Zoller ◽  
Thomas Rosemann ◽  
Nahara Anani Martínez-González ◽  
Corinne Chmiel

Background Long-term care for patients with chronic diseases poses a huge challenge in primary care. There are deficits in care, especially regarding monitoring and creating structured follow-ups. Appropriate electronic medical records (EMR) could support this, but so far, no generic evidence-based template exists. Objective The aim of this study is to develop an evidence-based standardized, generic template that improves the monitoring of patients with chronic conditions in primary care by means of an EMR. Methods We used an adapted Delphi procedure to evaluate a structured set of evidence-based monitoring indicators for 5 highly prevalent chronic diseases (ie, diabetes mellitus type 2, asthma, arterial hypertension, chronic heart failure, and osteoarthritis). We assessed the indicators’ utility in practice and summarized them into a user-friendly layout. Results This multistep procedure resulted in a monitoring tool consisting of condensed sets of indicators, which were divided into sublayers to maximize ergonomics. A cockpit serves as an overview of fixed goals and a set of procedures to facilitate disease management. An additional tab contains information on nondisease-specific indicators such as allergies and vital signs. Conclusions Our generic template systematically integrates the existing scientific evidence for the standardized long-term monitoring of chronic conditions. It contains a user-friendly and clinically sensible layout. This template can improve the care for patients with chronic diseases when using EMRs in primary care.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandra Falck ◽  
Marco Zoller ◽  
Thomas Rosemann ◽  
Nahara Anani Martínez-González ◽  
Corinne Chmiel

BACKGROUND Long-term care for patients with chronic diseases poses a huge challenge in primary care. There are deficits in care, especially regarding monitoring and creating structured follow-ups. Appropriate electronic medical records (EMR) could support this, but so far, no generic evidence-based template exists. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to develop an evidence-based standardized, generic template that improves the monitoring of patients with chronic conditions in primary care by means of an EMR. METHODS We used an adapted Delphi procedure to evaluate a structured set of evidence-based monitoring indicators for 5 highly prevalent chronic diseases (ie, diabetes mellitus type 2, asthma, arterial hypertension, chronic heart failure, and osteoarthritis). We assessed the indicators’ utility in practice and summarized them into a user-friendly layout. RESULTS This multistep procedure resulted in a monitoring tool consisting of condensed sets of indicators, which were divided into sublayers to maximize ergonomics. A cockpit serves as an overview of fixed goals and a set of procedures to facilitate disease management. An additional tab contains information on nondisease-specific indicators such as allergies and vital signs. CONCLUSIONS Our generic template systematically integrates the existing scientific evidence for the standardized long-term monitoring of chronic conditions. It contains a user-friendly and clinically sensible layout. This template can improve the care for patients with chronic diseases when using EMRs in primary care.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandra Falck ◽  
Marco Zoller ◽  
Thomas Rosemann ◽  
Nahara Anani Martínez-González ◽  
Corinne Chmiel

BACKGROUND Long-term care for patients with chronic diseases poses a huge challenge in primary care. In particular, there is a deficit regarding monitoring and structured follow-up. Appropriate electronic medical records (EMRs) could help improving this but, so far, there are no evidence-based specifications concerning the indicators that should be monitored at regular intervals. OBJECTIVE The aim was to identify and collect a set of evidence-based indicators that could be used for monitoring chronic conditions at regular intervals in primary care using EMRs. METHODS We searched MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Elsevier), the Cochrane Library (Wiley), the reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews, and the content of clinical guidelines. We included primary studies and guidelines reporting about indicators that allow for the assessment of care and help monitor the status and process of disease for five chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, asthma, arterial hypertension, chronic heart failure, and osteoarthritis. RESULTS The use of the term “monitoring” in terms of disease management and long-term care for patients with chronic diseases is not widely used in the literature. Nevertheless, we identified a substantial number of disease-specific indicators that can be used for routine monitoring of chronic diseases in primary care by means of EMRs. CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review summarizing the existing scientific evidence on the standardized long-term monitoring of chronic diseases using EMRs. In a second step, our extensive set of indicators will serve as a generic template for evaluating their usability by means of an adapted Delphi procedure. In a third step, the indicators will be summarized into a user-friendly EMR layout.


BMJ Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. e034542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cliff Lindeman ◽  
Ashley McCurdy ◽  
Carminda G Lamboglia ◽  
Brendan Wohlers ◽  
Anh N Q Pham ◽  
...  

ObjectiveExercise is an effective modality for the prevention and treatment of chronic conditions and family physicians are the healthcare providers tasked to manage patients’ chronic disease status. However, little is known about the exercise documentation in family-physician records. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted to describe family-physician-recorded exercise-related advice to patients in electronic medical records.DesignScoping review.SettingPrimary care clinics.Search strategyPubMed, Medline, SPORTDiscus, Google, Dissertations & Theses Global, OCLC PapersFirst (via First Search) and included references were searched between 1 January 1990 and 10 June 2018. Extracted information included year, geographic origin, data input structure, input frequency and content of exercise inputs in family physicians’ electronic medical records. The primary outcomes are the structure, purpose and frequency of inputs.ResultsOf a possible 1758 documents, 83 remained after a title and abstract scan and 22 after a full-text review. These documents included 32 findings of physical activity/exercise medical record documentation: counselling/advising patients (50.0%), status (12.5%), embedded questionnaires (12.5%), status as a risk factor (12.5%), health promotion documentation (6.3%), inactivity status (3.1%) and grading (3.1%). The frequency of exercise inputs in primary care records vary from as low as 0.4% of patients with documentation of physical activity health promotion inputs to as high as 87.8% of patients with exercise or physical activity status recorded. The majority of included documents (63.6%) were focused on patients with identified chronic conditions.ConclusionThe findings suggest that the structure and purpose of exercise documentation is often unclear or unspecified. Studies that present exercise information from family-physician medical records tend to focus on patients with specific chronic conditions and present little detail about the field from which information was extracted. The review found that the proportion of patients with physical activity or exercise information is often less than half.


Author(s):  
Lisa Lix ◽  
Alexander Singer ◽  
Alan Katz ◽  
Marina Yogendran ◽  
Saeed Al-Azazi

ABSTRACTObjectivesCanadians are investing heavily in electronic medical records (EMRs) to inform primary care practice improvements. The Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) is a national practice-based network that has enrolled more than one million patients to date. Accurate CPCSSN EMR data are essential for unbiased research about chronic disease prevention and management. The study purpose was to test the accuracy of chronic disease case definitions in EMR data from one CPCSSN site. ApproachThis study linked CPCSSN EMR data, hospital records, physician billing claims, prescription drug records, and population registration files for the province of Manitoba. Individuals who had at least one encounter with a CPCSSN practice between 1998 and 2012, were at least 18 years of age, and had a minimum of two years of healthcare coverage before and after the study index date were included. Separate cohorts were defined for the following chronic diseases: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), depression, diabetes, hypertension, and osteoarthritis. Validated case definitions based on diagnoses in physician and hospital records and prescription drug data were used estimate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and kappa of each EMR chronic disease case definition. ResultsMore than 74,000 individuals were included in each cohort, except for COPD which had 51,000. Approximately half of each cohort was comprised of urban residents. The average age ranged from 45.9 years for individuals with depression to 65.3 years for individuals with COPD. Hypertension had the highest prevalence (22.0%) in EMR data followed by depression (14.6%). Estimates of agreement (i.e., kappa) for EMR and administrative data ranged from 0.47 for COPD to 0.58 for diabetes. Sensitivity of the EMR data was lowest for COPD (37.4%; 95% CI 36.0-38.8) and highest for diabetes (57.6%; 95% confidence interval [CI] 56.6-58.6). PPV estimates were lowest for osteoarthritis (66.9%; 95% CI 66.0-67.8) and highest for hypertension (78.3%; 95% CI 77.7-78.9). Specificity estimates were consistently above 90% and NPV estimates were always greater than 80%. Validity estimates for the EMR case definitions were associated with demographic and comorbidity characteristics of the study cohorts. ConclusionsValidity of EMR data, when compared to administrative health data, for ascertaining five different chronic diseases was fair to good; it varied with the disease under investigation. Further research is needed to identify methods for improving the accuracy of chronic disease case definitions in EMR data.


Author(s):  
Zining Xia ◽  
WenJuan Gao ◽  
Xuejuan Wei ◽  
Yingchun Peng ◽  
Hongjun Ran ◽  
...  

Objective: To evaluate the degree to which electronic medical records (EMRs) were used in primary care and the value of EMRs as perceived by primary care workers in China. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 2719 physicians (n = 2213) and nurses (n = 506) selected from 462 community health centres across all regions of mainland China except for Tibet. Regional differences in the responses regarding the functionality of existing EMR systems and the perceived value of EMRs were examined using Chi-square tests and ordinal regression analyses. Results: Less than 59% of the community health centres had adopted EMRs. More than 89% of the respondents believed that it was necessary to adopt EMRs in primary care. Of the existing EMR systems, 50% had access to telehealth support for laboratory, imaging or patient consultation services. Only 38.4% captured data that met all task needs and 35.4% supported referral arrangements. “Management of chronic conditions” was voted (66%) as the top preferred feature of EMRs. Higher levels of recognition of the value of EMRs were found in the relatively more developed eastern region compared with their counterparts in other regions. Conclusions: Rapid EMR adoption in primary care is evident in mainland China. The low level of functionality in data acquisition and referral arrangements runs counter to the requirements for “management of chronic conditions”, the most preferred feature of EMRs in primary care. Regional disparities in the realised value of EMRs in primary care deserve policy attention.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Phillips ◽  
Chris Wheeler ◽  
Josh Campbell ◽  
Alberto Coustasse

10.2196/10879 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. e10879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandra Falck ◽  
Marco Zoller ◽  
Thomas Rosemann ◽  
Nahara Anani Martínez-González ◽  
Corinne Chmiel

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