Background: Hospital-acquired C. difficile colitis is associated with increased length of stay (LOS) and significant morbidity and mortality. During hospitalization, patients visit many procedural, diagnostic, and treatment areas throughout the hospital, presenting opportunities for spore contamination of surfaces and nosocomial disease transmission. We developed a novel methodology using electronic health record (EHR) data to map [...]

Background: Hospital-acquired C. difficile colitis is associated with increased length of stay (LOS) and significant morbidity and mortality. During hospitalization, patients visit many procedural, diagnostic, and treatment areas throughout the hospital, presenting opportunities for spore contamination of surfaces and nosocomial disease transmission. We developed a novel methodology using electronic health record (EHR) data to map [...]

Background: Sepsis is a common, costly, and mortal clinical syndrome. Many delays in sepsis recognition and intervention are due to “data latency,” the period of time between data suggestive of sepsis being entered in the EHR to identification and interpretation by a care provider. The magnitude of this delay can be significant, as the diagnostic [...]

Background: Hospital associated injury is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Lack of communication about patient safety issues among care team members and with patients is a key source of hospital errors and patient harm, and making errors more visible is a key strategy to reduce negative outcomes. Electronic health record [...]

Background: Given the widespread adoption of electronic health record systems, the majority of patient orders are now enacted through electronic orders. We aimed to describe the average number of electronic orders entered for medicine patients hospitalized at different levels of care and determine if electronic ordering patterns reflected patient acuity and severity of illness. Methods: [...]