Effectiveness of a Clinical-Decision-Support System in Improving Compliance With Cardiac-Care Quality Measures and Supporting Resident Training

Many of the quality measures for patients with heart failure (HF) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI) require the completion of comprehensive discharge instructions, including instructions about medications to be taken after discharge. To improve compliance in a tertiary care teaching hospital with these evidence-based quality measures, a clinical-decision-support system (CDSS) that uses an electronic checklist was developed. The CDSS prompts clinicians at every training level to consistently create comprehensive discharge instructions addressing quality measures. The authors compared compliance during the 15-month preintervention and postintervention periods. Compliance with discharge measures for AMI (i.e., aspirin, beta-blocker, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor ACEI, or angiotensin receptor blocker ARB use) and for HF (i.e., discharge instructions, left ventricular systolic function LVSF evaluation, and ACEI/ARB use) was assessed. The delivery of discharge instructions showed significant improvement from the preintervention period to the postintervention period (37.2% to 93.0%; P < .001). Compliance with prescription of ACEI or ARB also improved significantly for HF (80.7% to 96.4%; P < .001) and AMI (88.1% to 100%; P = .014) patients. Compliance with the remaining measures was higher before intervention, and, thus, the modest improvement in the postintervention period was not statistically significant (AMI patients: aspirin, 97.5% to 98.8%; P = .43; and beta-blocker, 97.9% to 98.7%; P = .78; HF patients: LVSF, 99.3% to 99.1%; P = .78). Implementation of a CDSS with computerized electronic prompts improved compliance with selected cardiac-care quality measures. The design of quality-improvement decision-support tools should incorporate educational missions in their message and design.