Clinical Documentation Improvement Research Articles

Improving the Monitoring and Management of Clozapine-Induced Gastrointestinal Hypomotility (CIGH) in Community Mental Health Services: A Quality Improvement Approach.

Clozapine is the only approved antipsychotic for refractory schizophrenia to date. It can cause a range of serious and fatal adverse effects, including Clozapine-Induced Gastrointestinal Hypomotility (CIGH). While guidance is readily available to help manage CIGH effectively in hospital inpatients, practical recommendations applicable to the community (outpatient) setting are lacking. This project set out to improve the prevention, detection and management of CIGH in psychiatric outpatients. An initial baseline audit followed by quality improvement work was undertaken in a busy support worker-run community clozapine clinic focusing on, education and training, risk assessments and clinical documentation. The project was registered and managed using the Life QI web-based platform, where a set of primary and secondary drivers were defined and change ideas were executed. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected over a three-month period, demonstrating a significant improvement in clinical documentation (up from 36% to 99%). 23% of enhanced risk assessments resulted in treatment recommendations, modifiable risk factors were proactively discussed in 53% of clinic appointments and 65% of patients were provided with additional written information on CIGH. It was evident from staff and our patient feedback that further efforts would be required to continue to raise awareness about harms of unmanaged constipation among this client group. Future approaches may include enhanced collaborative efforts with primary care, and improving the skill mix in existing clozapine clinics, which could include the utilisation of mental health pharmacists.

CDI 2.0: Optimising CMI and risk-adjustment value through data analytics and provider education

Accurate clinical documentation is vital for any healthcare facility. Documentation in the record plays a critical role in reimbursement, case mix index, risk adjusted quality outcomes, length of stay days, etc. The need for Clinical documentation improvement (CDI) specialists is high. In this article, we discuss the success we have had by transitioning from a traditional approach to capture severity reporting (CDI 1.0), which relies heavily on the concurrent review of medical records by the CDI team, to a patient population driven and provider focused approach (CDI 2.0).

Rotation X: An Innovative Quality Improvement Focused Curriculum Built Into an Internal Medicine Residency

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) states that resident physicians must participate in quality improvement (QI) and patient safety (PS) initiatives during their training. Furthermore, once residents enter the workforce as attending physicians, their performance is often based on metrics related to the quality of care provided and the patient’s experience while in the hospital. However, many internal medicine residency programs have a variation of curriculum that is focused on QI and PS. Methods: At our institution, we sought to incorporate education in QI and PS in a longitudinal and structures fashion throughout a resident’s three years of training. Hence, Rotation X was created as both a collaborative and innovative one-week long curriculum with targeted teaching across the continuum of residency training. Rotation X was implemented as a mandatory rotation for all post graduate year (PGY) 1 and 3 trainees in our internal medicine program. During this rotation, learners meet with the clinical documentation improvement (CDI) team, learn about the process of completing a root cause analysis, and review a case with the quality improvement team. Learners also participate in multidisciplinary meetings including a nursing-physician series, focused on improving communication in the hospital, and met with patients nearing discharge to learn about their unique perspective during inpatient hospital stay. Results: All residents participating in Rotation X were surveyed over the course of a year to ascertain their perspective on the rotation. We collated responses from the PGY-1s (interns) and PGY-3s (senior residents). Of the PGY-3 class, at least 80% found the heart failure/pharmacy session, RN-MD session, root cause analysis (RCA) session, CDI session, and catheter associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rounds either very or extremely useful. Of the intern class, more than 75% found all session at least somewhat useful with at least half finding the sessions very or extremely useful to their training. Conclusions: With the growing landscape of QI and PS in medicine, we sought out to seamlessly integrate a focused curriculum into our internal medicine residency program. Rotation X, a one-week long rotation embedded with collaborative sessions, was curated to engage our learners in these domains. We found that the curriculum was well received by both our interns and senior residents. Our curriculum is easily adaptable and can be integrated into existing programs, with the capacity to tailor Rotation X sessions to a program’s goals and focus points in the domain of quality improvement.

High Reliability in a Safety Net Hospital Leading to Operational Excellence.

The objective of this work was to establish sustainable systems for quality improvement in an Academic Medical Center and Safety Net Hospital. High reliability principles of leadership engagement, a culture of safety, and sustainable performance improvement were used. Target areas for improvement were clinical outcomes for patients, public reputation scores, and lower cost of care. The system was based on annual focused goals with specific targets, improvement teams, transparent scorecards, and data driven work. Program visibility was championed by leaders. Consistent education on quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness for all employees created buy-in. Data review and accountability tracked progress, helped resource allocation, and defined next steps. In the first 5 years, all patient quality and safety metrics improved between 10% and 60%. This improvement resulted in higher CMS Star Ranking and Leapfrog patient safety grade. The next phase included maximizing value by expanding into hospital operations and finance with a focus on improved clinical documentation and reduced length of stay and cost of care. Clinical documentation improvement led to a 15% increase in comorbidity capture. This positively impacted reported outcomes and hospital payment by appropriate risk adjustment. Length of stay was addressed with a new care coordination program and physician-driven utilization review. High reliability principles are applicable in a resource limited healthcare system. Improved clinical and operational results were achieved through goal setting, improvement teams, and data driven projects leading to creation of an office of operational excellence.

Lower comorbidity scores and severity levels in Veterans Health Administration hospitals: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundPrevious studies found that documentation of comorbidities differed when Veterans received care within versus outside Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Changes to medical center funding, increased attention to performance reporting, and expansion of Clinical Documentation Improvement programs, however, may have caused coding in VHA to change.MethodsUsing repeated cross-sectional data, we compared Elixhauser-van Walraven scores and Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) severity levels for Veterans’ admissions across settings and payers over time, utilizing a linkage of VHA and all-payer discharge data for 2012–2017 in seven US states. To minimize selection bias, we analyzed records for Veterans admitted to both VHA and non-VHA hospitals in the same year. Using generalized linear models, we adjusted for patient and hospital characteristics.ResultsFollowing adjustment, VHA admissions consistently had the lowest predicted mean comorbidity scores (4.44 (95% CI 4.34–4.55)) and lowest probability of using the most severe DRG (22.1% (95% CI 21.4%-22.8%)). In contrast, Medicare-covered admissions had the highest predicted mean comorbidity score (5.71 (95% CI 5.56–5.85)) and highest probability of using the top DRG (35.3% (95% CI 34.2%-36.4%)).ConclusionsMore effective strategies may be needed to improve VHA documentation, and current risk-adjusted comparisons should account for differences in coding intensity.

Implementation of a Real-Time Documentation Assistance Tool: Automated Diagnosis (AutoDx).

Clinical documentation improvement programs are utilized by most health care systems to enhance provider documentation. Suggestions are sent to providers in a variety of ways, and are commonly referred to as coding queries. Responding to these coding queries can require significant provider time and do not often align with workflows. To enhance provider documentation in a more consistent manner without creating undue burden, alternative strategies are required. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of a real-time documentation assistance tool, named AutoDx, on the volume of coding queries and encounter-level outcome metrics, including case-mix index (CMI). The AutoDx tool was developed utilizing tools existing within the electronic health record, and is based on the generation of messages when clinical conditions are met. These messages appear within provider notes and required little to no interaction. Initial diagnoses included in the tool were electrolyte deficiencies, obesity, and malnutrition. The tool was piloted in a cohort of Hospital Medicine providers, then expanded to the Neuro Intensive Care Unit (NICU), with addition diagnoses being added. The initial Hospital Medicine implementation evaluation included 590 encounters pre- and 531 post-implementation. The volume of coding queries decreased 57% (p < 0.0001) for the targeted diagnoses compared with 6% (p = 0.77) in other high-volume diagnoses. In the NICU cohort, 829 encounters pre-implementation were compared with 680 post. The proportion of AutoDx coding queries compared with all other coding queries decreased from 54.9 to 37.1% (p < 0.0001). During the same period, CMI demonstrated a significant increase post-implementation (4.00 vs. 4.55, p = 0.02). The real-time documentation assistance tool led to a significant decrease in coding queries for targeted diagnoses in two unique provider cohorts. This improvement was also associated with a significant increase in CMI during the implementation time period.

Improving Quality Metrics in Neurosurgery: A Spinal Surgery 3-Year Case Review

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite the known importance of accurate clinical documentation as a companion to quality patient care, this is not often prioritized in practice and leads to a variety of downstream consequences. Inaccurate documentation leads to missed opportunities in full, accurate coding. In turn, it also negatively influences hospital and physician quality ranking, medical center profiling, and revenue captured. The aim of this study is to highlight the opportunity for continuous improvement in clinical documentation and the significance accurate clinical documentation has on outcome measures, such as expected length of stay (eLOS). METHODS: A single-center retrospective chart review took place for patients undergoing spinal surgery from 2019 to 2021. Based on Vizient's diagnosis-related group risk model for eLOS, 192 charts spanning 10 unique diagnosis-related groups were reviewed to identify ICD-10 diagnosis and procedure codes that were not coded or not clearly documented by a physician. A new eLOS for each patient was recalculated with the addition of the newly identified variables and then compared with the original eLOS. RESULTS: Overall, there was a significant difference between the original eLOS and new eLOS when the newly identified variables were added (P &lt; .001). Of 192 patient charts, 89.5% had at least one new variable contributing to eLOS, with an average of 2.60 (0, 12) new variables. This resulted in an average increase in eLOS of 2.869 days (−0.160, 35.129). Compared with the observed LOS, the new eLOS was significantly different (P &lt; .001), whereas the original LOS was not (P = .5661). CONCLUSION: Incomplete documentation and coding can misrepresent the quality of patient care provided and the complexity of their cases. This represents an opportunity for improvement for both the clinicians, clinical documentation improvement specialists, and coders to improve quality metrics and hospital rankings.

The impact of rapid diagnostic testing on hospital administrative coding accuracy for influenza.

Hospital administrative coding may underestimate the true incidence of influenza-associated hospitalisation. Earlier availability of test results could lead to improved accuracy of administrative coding. In this study we evaluated International Classification of Diseases 10 (ICD-10) coding for influenza (with [J09-J10] or without [J11] virus identified) in adult inpatients who underwent testing in the year prior, compared to those in the 2.5 years after, the introduction of rapid PCR testing in 2017. Other factors associated with influenza coding were evaluated using logistic regression. Discharge summaries were audited to assess the impact of documentation and result availability on coding accuracy. Influenza was confirmed by laboratory testing in 862 of 5755 (15%) patients tested after rapid PCR introduction compared with 170 of 926 (18%) prior. Following the introduction of rapid testing there was a significant increase in patients allocated J09 or J10 ICD-10 codes (768 of 860 [89%] vs 107 of 140 [79%], P=0.001). On multivariable analysis, factors independently associated with correct coding were rapid PCR testing (aOR 4.36 95% CI [2.75-6.90]) and increasing length of stay (aOR 1.01, 95% CI [1.00-1.01]). Correctly coded patients were more likely to have documentation of influenza in their discharge summaries (95 of 101 [89%] vs 11 of 101 [10%], P<0.001) and less likely to have pending results at discharge (8 of 101 [8%] vs 65 of 101 [61%], P<0.001). The introduction of rapid PCR testing for influenza was associated with more accurate hospital coding. One possible explanation is faster test turnaround leading to improvement in clinical documentation.

Virtual Multidisciplinary Rounds to Reduce Length of Stay, Decrease Variation, and Promote Accountability.

Evidence suggests in-person multidisciplinary rounds can help reduce length of stay (LOS) and improve throughput, but there are limited studies about the effectiveness of virtual multidisciplinary rounds on these measures. The authors hypothesized that virtual multidisciplinary rounds could help reduce LOS, improve throughput, promote accountability, and reduce provider variation. The research team designed and implemented virtual multidisciplinary rounds by a phone conference call with key stakeholders, including hospitalists, case managers, the clinical documentation improvement team, physical and occupational therapy, and nursing leaders. To track progress in real time, dashboards were created using data from electronic medical records. After several months, unit-based discharge huddles were also implemented to supplement the process and sustain the improvement. The interventions led to more than 60% of discharges below geometric mean LOS after starting the initiative, compared to approximately 52% before the initiative. Mean observation hours went from around 44 hours to 31.9 hours, and the change was sustained for more than a year. In fiscal year 2021, 3,813 excess days were reduced in 10 months, resulting in combined savings of $6.7 million. A decrease in hospitalist provider variation is noted with the initiative, which is a crucial contributor to the results. Virtual multidisciplinary rounds combined with other interventions can effectively reduce LOS and observation hours. Decreasing variation among hospitalists and improved key stakeholder engagement can be achieved with virtual multidisciplinary rounds. More studies to test the effectiveness of virtual multidisciplinary rounds in various patient care settings would provide more insights.

Optimizing Neurology Inpatient Documentation: A Pilot Study of a Novel Discharge Documentation EHR Tool.

Clinical documentation of patient acuity is a major determinant of payer reimbursement. This project aimed to improve case mix index (CMI) by incorporating a novel electronic health record (EHR) discharge documentation tool into the inpatient general neurology service at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center. We used data from Vizient AMC Hospital: Risk Model Summary for Clinical Data Base (CBD) 2017 to create a discharge diagnosis documentation tool consisting of dropdown menus to better capture relevant secondary diagnoses and comorbidities. After implementation of this tool, we compared pre- (July 2017-June 2019) and post-intervention (July 2019-June 2021) time periods on mean expected length of stay (LOS) and mean CMI with two sample T-tests and the percentage of encounters classified as having Major Complications/Comorbidities (MCC), with Complication/Comorbidity (CC), and without CC/MCC with tests of proportions. Mean CMI increased significantly from 1.2 pre-intervention to 1.4 post-intervention implementation (P < .01). There was a pattern of increased MCC percentages for "Bacterial infections," "Other Disorders of Nervous System", "Multiple Sclerosis," and "Nervous System Neoplasms" diagnosis related groups post-intervention. This pilot study describes the creation of an innovative EHR discharge diagnosis documentation tool in collaboration with neurology healthcare providers, the clinical documentation improvement team, and neuro-informaticists. This novel discharge diagnosis documentation tool demonstrates promise in increasing CMI, shifting diagnosis related groups to a greater proportion of those with MCC, and improving the quality of clinical documentation.

Reducing Inpatient Psychiatric Unit Denials: A Case Management Quality Improvement Project.

The purpose of the inpatient psychiatric unit denials reduction project was to establish a taskforce to analyze denials data for root cause and identify an effective solution to prevent denials through improved provider documentation. The development and implementation of the project occurred at Stanford Health Care, a nonprofit Level 1 trauma hospital, with a 29-bed inpatient psychiatric unit containing both open and secured levels of care. The project was led by the Utilization/Denials Management team, which is subteam within the Case Management Department. Team members are Nurse Case Managers specializing in the management of denials and appeals, data analysis and trending of denials, denial avoidance, and reduction of financial risk. Denials data analysis revealed the Psychiatry Service Line was responsible for over 70% of payer denials within the Length of Stay Write-offs category. In early 2019, the Utilization/Denials Management team initiated a quality improvement project using A3 Lean Approach methodology and evidence-based practice to guide the implementation. The partnership and collaboration included Case Management, Revenue Cycle, Clinical Documentation Improvement, Technology and Digital Solutions, and Psychiatry Service Line leadership that had an interest in reducing payer denials. Outcomes measured for the project were based on denials data for (fiscal year) FY19, the preintervention period, compared to FY20 and FY21, the postintervention period. From FY19 to FY20, revenue loss decreased by 42%. The downward trend continued from FY20 to FY21 with a recorded decrease by 69%. The most important implication of the project was improved physician documentation and medical necessity supporting the severity and intensity of inpatient psychiatric level of care, and medical justification for the inpatient stay not only to prevent medical necessity denials but to accurately reflect the care that was provided. High-quality documentation correlates to the high quality of care being provided. This project is far reaching not only for psychiatric units but also reproducible for other acute hospital service lines. Case Management is a multidisciplinary role, and this work is most meaningful for a Nurse Case Manager engaged in care coordination, including utilization and denials management.

Resident integration with inpatient clinical documentation improvement: a quality improvement project

BackgroundClinical documentation improvement (CDI) is an increasing part of health system quality and patient care with clinical documentation integrity specialists (CDIS) expanding into daily physician workflow. This integration can be...

Measuring case severity: a novel tool for benchmarking and clinical documentation improvement

BackgroundSeverity of illness (SOI) is an All Patients Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (APR DRG) modifier based on comorbidity capture. Tracking SOI helps hospitals improve performance and resource distribution. Furthermore, benchmarking SOI plays a key role in Quality Improvement (QI) efforts such as Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) programs. The current SOI system highly relies on the 3 M APR DRG grouper that is updated annually, making it difficult to track severity longitudinally and benchmark against hospitals with different patient populations. Here, we describe an alternative SOI scoring system that is grouper-independent and that can be tracked longitudinally.MethodsAdmission data for 2019–2020 U.S. News and World Report Honor Roll facilities were downloaded from the Vizient Clinical Database and split into training and testing datasets. Elixhauser comorbidities, body systems developed from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), and ICD-10-CM complication and comorbidity (CC/MCC) indicators were selected as the predictors for orthogonal polynomial regression models to predict patients’ admission and discharge SOI. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and Precision-Recall (PR) analysis, and prediction accuracy were used to evaluate model performance.ResultsIn the training dataset, the full model including both Elixhauser comorbidities and body system CC/MCC indicators had the highest ROC AUC, PR AUC and predication accuracy for both admission (ROC AUC: 92.9%; PR AUC: 91.0%; prediction accuracy: 85.4%) and discharge SOI (ROC AUC: 93.6%; PR AUC: 92.8%; prediction accuracy: 86.2%). The model including only body system CC/MCC indicators had similar performance for admission (ROC AUC: 92.4%; PR AUC: 90.4%; prediction accuracy: 84.8%) and discharge SOI (ROC AUC: 93.1%; PR AUC: 92.2%; prediction accuracy: 85.6%) as the full model. The model including only Elixhauser comorbidities exhibited the lowest performance. Similarly, in the validation dataset, the prediction accuracy was 86.2% for the full model, 85.6% for the body system model, and 79.3% for the comorbidity model. With fewer variables and less model complexity, the body system model was more efficient and was determined to be the optimal model. The probabilities generated from this model, named J_Score and J_Score_POA, successfully measured SOI and had practical applications in assessment of CDI performance.ConclusionsThe J_Scores generated from the body system model have significant value in evaluating admission and discharge severity of illness. We believe that this new scoring system will provide a useful tool for healthcare institutions to benchmark patients’ illness severity and augment Quality Improvement (QI) efforts.

Using Quality Improvement to Improve Identification and Documentation of Malnutrition in Hospitalized Pediatric Patients.

Introduction:Recent publications have highlighted the importance and impact of recognizing malnutrition in hospitalized children. After noting that patients with malnutrition frequently went unrecognized in our facility, we implemented an interprofessional intervention comprising hospital medicine physicians, dietitians, and the clinical documentation improvement team to improve recognition and documentation of malnutrition in these patients, thereby facilitating earlier intervention.Methods:We implemented three separate plan-do-study-act cycles to improve the identification and documentation of malnutrition among patients hospitalized at our facility. The cycles consisted of identifying malnutrition using z-scores, educating providers, and implementing smart text within the medical record to help with consistent documentation. In addition, real-time communication between the disciplines (nutrition services, clinical documentation improvement providers, and hospitalists) was also employed to improve documentation quality. After completing the plan-do-study-act cycles, charts were reviewed to evaluate the nutritional interventions received.Results:Baseline data revealed that only 13% of patients with z-scores indicative of malnutrition were identified as such in attending physicians’ documentation. Upon implementation of our plan-do-study-act cycles, documentation of these patients increased to greater than 64%. Patients with documented malnutrition received nutritional interventions at least 81% of the time, increasing from 35% at baseline.Conclusion:Our findings demonstrate that an interprofessional approach can dramatically enhance the identification and documentation of malnutrition in hospitalized children, leading to earlier intervention.

382 Compliance With Current Excision Margin Guidelines for Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer: Do We Make the Cut?

Abstract Aim Non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC) are the most common malignancies worldwide, with basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) constituting an ever-growing clinical burden within Plastic &amp; Reconstructive Surgery. In this 3-cycle Quality Improvement (QI) initiative we sought to evaluate and improve our unit’s compliance with British Association of Dermatology (BAD) guidance on excision margins for NMSCs. Method Following results from two Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles, a third retrospective review of clinic letters, operative notes and histopathology reports was undertaken to identify NMSCs that were excised during May 2021 and assess compliance with recommended excision margins according to risk stratification. Results The dissemination of cycle 1 findings at departmental meetings, as well as the implementation of guideline posters and operative note templates conferred a significant improvement in both clinical documentation (12% to 100%) and local compliance with excision margin guidelines for BCCs (53% to 71%) and SCCs (50% to 79%). Following the adoption of new BAD guidelines on SSC margins in early 2021, a third cycle comprising 42 lesions demonstrated a sustained improvement in clinical documentation (100%) after a 7-month period and similar guideline compliance rates for both BCC (67%) and SCC (78%). Conclusions Adequate excision margins in cutaneous malignant pathology are vital to ensure complete removal, thus minimising the risk of recurrence. Although improvement across the PDSA cycles has been sustained despite the introduction of new SCC margin guidelines, we aim to introduce further interventions such as a knowledge and practice survey to continue improving excision margin compliance.

Improving Mortality Through a Multihospital, Collaborative Quality Improvement Project.

Improving hospital mortality is a key focus of quality and safety efforts at both the local and national level. Structured interventions can assist organizations in determining whether interventional efforts have led to sustained improvement. The PARiHS framework (Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services) can assist organizations in implementing research into practice. This study investigates the use of the PARiHS framework in implementing a multihospital quality improvement project aimed at improving observed-to-expected mortality as measured by Vizient's Clinical Data Base (CDB). Structured interventions during the study period included mortality reviews, clinical documentation improvement opportunities, educational webinars, training and support in the use of CDB to explore ongoing opportunities for mortality improvement and quarterly reports to each participating hospital's leadership team on their performance. Data were gathered from an improvement collaborative in the Upper Midwest, which comprised 34 hospitals, of which 17 participated in the intervention. Measurement occurred from Quarter 4 2016 through Quarter 3 2020 and consisted of a preintervention, intervention, and postintervention period. Although both participating and nonparticipating hospitals achieved a significant reduction in their mortality observed-to-expected ratio from the preintervention period through the postintervention period, the participating hospitals achieved a greater reduction in their observed-to-expected mortality ratio ( P < 0.0004). In addition, the participating hospitals achieved a relative 21% improvement in the mortality domain rank of the Vizient Quality & Accountability Study.

Strategies to Improve Compliance with Clinical Nursing Documentation Guidelines in the Acute Hospital Setting: A Systematic Review and Analysis.

IntroductionThis systematic review attempts to answer the following question – which strategies to improve clinical nursing documentation have been most effective in the acute hospital setting?MethodsA keyword search for relevant studies was conducted in CINAHL and Medline in May 2019 and October 2020.Studies were appraised using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal for quasi-experimental studies. The studies were graded for level of evidence according to GRADE principles.The data collected in each study were added to a Summary of Data (SOD) spreadsheet. Pre intervention and a post intervention percentage compliance scores were calculated for each study where possible i.e. (mean score/possible total score) × (100/1). A percentage change in compliance for each study was calculated by subtracting the pre intervention score from the post intervention score. The change in compliance score and the post intervention compliance score were both added to the SOD and used as a basis for comparison between the studies. Each study was analyzed thematically in terms of the intervention strategies used. Compliance rates and the interventions used were compared to determine if any strategies were effective in achieving a meaningful improvement in compliance.ResultsSeventy six full text articles were reviewed for this systematic review. Fifty seven of the studies were before and after studies and 66 were conducted in western countries. Publishing dates for the studies ranged from 1991 to 2020.Eleven studies included documentation audits with personal feedback as one of the strategies used to improve nursing documentation. Ten of these studies achieved a post intervention compliance rate ≥ 70%.ConclusionNotwithstanding the limitations of this study, it may be that documentation audit with personal feedback, when combined with other context specific strategies, is a reliable method for gaining meaningful improvements in clinical nursing documentation. The level of evidence is very low and further research is required.

Patient clinical documentation in telehealth environment: are we collecting appropriate and sufficient information for best practice?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of telehealth for patient visits grew rapidly and served an important role as a valuable and necessary resource. Although clinical documentation is critical for telehealth patient visits, there is limited information about how healthcare facilities manage telehealth patient visit documentation, technology used for telehealth visits, and challenges encountered with telehealth patient visit documentation. This study aimed to assess the use of telehealth during the pandemic, the quality of clinical documentation in telehealth practice and to identify challenges and issues encountered with telehealth patient visits in order to develop a strategy for best practices for telehealth documentation and data management. Data were collected for this cross-sectional study in January-February 2021 via a self-designed survey of administrators/managers from physicians' offices and mental health facilities. Survey questions included four categories: health organization demographic information; telehealth visits; clinical documentation for telehealth visit; and challenges and barriers related to telehealth documentation technology use. Of 76 respondents, more than half (62%) of the healthcare facilities started using telehealth for patient visits within one year of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 94% of respondents indicating an increased use of telehealth for patient visits since the pandemic. The most common types of telehealth patient care provided during the pandemic included pediatrics, primary care, cardiology, and women's health. The most consistent data documentation of telehealth visits included: date of service, patient identification number, communication methods, patient informed consent, diagnosis and impression, evaluation results, and recommendations. The telehealth visit data was most commonly used for patient care and clinical practice, billing and reimbursement, quality improvement and patient satisfaction, and administrative planning. The top barriers to telehealth use by the healthcare professionals included patient challenges with telehealth services, such as inequities in quality of technology, lack of patient understanding, and lack of patient satisfaction; this was followed by frustration with constant updates of telehealth guidelines and procedures, understanding required telehealth documentation for reimbursement purposes, payer denial for telehealth visits, and legal and risk issues. Findings from this study can assist government entities, policymakers, and healthcare organizations in developing and advocating best practices in telehealth usage and clinical documentation improvement strategies.

Relational aspects of regulating clinical work: examining electronic and in-person compliance mechanisms

BackgroundClinical documentation quality is an important way to facilitate clinical communication, improve patient safety metrics and optimise hospital coding and public reporting. However, the monitoring of clinicians by external individuals...

Myocardial infarction classification and its implications on measures of cardiovascular outcomes, quality, and racial/ethnic disparities.

Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, with approximately 805 000 cumulative deaths from myocardial infarctions (MI) from 2005 to 2014. Gender and racial/ethnic disparities in MI diagnoses are becoming more evident in quality review audits. Although recent changes in diagnostic codes provided an improved framework, clinically distinguishing types of MI remains a challenge. MI misdiagnoses and health disparities contribute to adverse outcomes in cardiac medicine. We conducted a literature review of relevant biomedical sources related to the classification of MI and disparities in cardiovascular care and outcomes. From the studies analyzed, African Americans and women have higher rates of mortality from MI, are more probably to be younger and present with other comorbidities and are less probably to receive novel therapies with respect to type of MI. As high‐sensitivity troponin assays are adopted in the United States, implementation should account for how race and sex differences have been demonstrated in the reference range and diagnostic threshold of the newer assays. More research is needed to assess how the complexity of health disparities contributes to adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Creating dedicated medical quality teams (physicians, nurses, clinical documentation improvement specialists, and medical coders) and incorporating a plan‐do‐check‐adjust quality improvement model are strategies that could potentially help better define and diagnose MI, reduce financial burdens due to MI misdiagnoses, reduce cardiovascular‐related health disparities, and ultimately improve and save lives.