A Pragmatic Guide to Establishing Clinical Decision Support Governance and Addressing Decision Support Fatigue: a Case Study

AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2018 Dec 5:2018:624-633. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

There is limited guidance available in the literature for establishing clinical decision support (CDS) governance and improving CDS effectiveness in a pragmatic, resource-efficient manner. Here, we describe how University of Utah Health established enterprise CDS governance in 2015 leveraging existing resources. Key components of the governance include a multi-stakeholder CDS Committee that vets new requests and reviews existing content; a requirement that proposed CDS is actually desired by intended recipients; coordination with other governance bodies; basic data analytics to identify high-frequency, low-value CDS and monitor progress; active solicitation of user issues; the transition of alert and reminder content to other, more appropriate areas in the electronic health record; and the judicious use of experimental designs to guide decision-making regarding CDS effectiveness. In the three years since establishing this governance, new CDS has been continuously added while the overall burden of clinician-facing alerts and reminders has been reduced by 53.8%.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alert Fatigue, Health Personnel / prevention & control*
  • Decision Support Systems, Clinical*
  • Humans
  • Medical Order Entry Systems
  • Medical Records Systems, Computerized*
  • Organizational Case Studies