Spectrum's Senior Associate Editor Samuel Moore sent me a note on an interesting news release titled, "Design of Patient Tracking Tools May Have Unintended Consequences" about a study by researchers at the University of Buffalo regarding the replacement of dry-erase patient status boards by electronic patient tracking systems. The researchers studied how new electronic patient-status boards were functioning in the emergency departments of two busy, university-affiliated hospitals.
What the researchers found was while there were surface similarities between the manual and electronic systems, there were subtle differences in the design of the latter that affected how health-care providers communicated and tracked patient care, sometimes not for the better. As one of the researchers noted,
"The manual whiteboard allows flexibility in tracking patients. For example, maybe the first time the provider sees a patient, she initials the name on the whiteboard, then the next time she circles the initials, then when the patient is discharged, she might put an 'x' in the circle, signals that are a means of communicating with her colleagues in the ER."
"With a computerized system, providers have to find an available computer terminal and log-in. The providers can't just walk up to the whiteboard and make a notation."
Whiteboards also provided immediate visual clues that the electronic tracking system did not, like how busy the emergency room was and how critical resources were allocated.
The researchers note that future electronic patient tracking systems need to investigate workflow and communication issues more carefully, and hope their study will encourage designers to better meet user needs.
