ISSN: 2652-1881
Background: Intensive care units are increasingly becoming involved in the management of critical care outreach services. At present, no guide exists to aid the design and implementation of a database to maintain an auditable record of these activities.
Objective: This study is a comparison of data completeness and auditor workload between electronic and paper record systems for documenting Intensive Care Outreach activity. We aim to describe the implementation and performance of an electronic critical care outreach database instrument (eTool) designed for this purpose. Details of database field design and practical details of the author’s experience with implementing this instrument are presented.
Method: The eTool was deployed using the PowerApps suite of applications included with a SharePoint and Microsoft Teams installation. Users were supplied with a mobile and desktop App for the creation and retrieval of records. The paper record and electronic database were audited to determine the difference in data completeness and the time taken to complete the audit.
Results: The paper record was less complete (total missing data = 11.82% vs.0.58%) and took longer to audit (average 5 hours 5 minutes vs. 41 minutes). There was excellent agreement between the auditors (ICC = 0.9977 and 0.9999 for the paper and electronic database respectively).
Conclusion: This example of an electronic solution for documenting critical care outreach work is an improvement over paper-based methods employed by most health services. Better integration with electronic patient records would yield even greater benefits.
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