Presented at the 1998 APIII Conference Return to 1998 Abstract Index
AN AUTOMATED REMINDER SYSTEM USING INTERNET TECHNOLOGY
Intermountain
Health Care
Salt Lake City, Utah
Dale A. Kern
Objective:
To assess the effect of an automated alerting system on
the completion rate of error management reports.
Setting:
A clinical laboratory service in three urban and suburban
hospitals.
Background:
Laboratory personnel who identify problems or errors initiate
error management reports. Laboratory policy requires that
a supervisor review each report. Because many reports were
never completed or were not completed in the required time
frame, an electronic error-reporting plan was implemented
using an Internet browser for all report submission and
review. An automated reminder system was created using standard
database queries and contemporary communication technology.
When a new error report is initiated, the system e-mails
a notification the next day to the appropriate laboratory
supervisor. Each week a summary of incomplete error reports
is e-mailed to each supervisor.
Methods:
The completion rate of error management reports was measured
for a two-month period before implementation of the reminder
system and for a two-month period after implementation.
Results:
The completion rates before and after system implementation
was as follows:
| Before 0.657 n=379 |
After 0.966 n=475 |
P-value p is less than 0.0001 |
Conclusion:
Implementation of the electronic reporting plan, combined
with the automated reminder system significantly improved
the completion rate of error management reports, approaching
100%.
