Positively interacting with best practice advisory notifications is correlated with an increased rate of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening, according to an analysis of all patients who triggered these communications alerts in an electronic medical record (EMR) system at a single tertiary medical center.
Nearly 1,300 patients triggered a notification over the three-year study period of the investigation carried out by a team of researchers from St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, led by first-named author Amin Mohamed Ahmed, MD, a vascular surgery fellow at the institution, and senior author Matthew Smeds, MD, professor of surgery.
Presenting the data at the Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society (MVSS) annual meeting in Grand Rapids, Michigan (Sept 15–17), the investigators found that providers interacted with—rather than dismissed—the alerts in 20.4% of patients. The overall screening rate in the cohort was 28.2%. “Interacting with the best practice advisory significantly increased the odds of being appropriately screened for a AAA [odds ratio (OR) 2.48)],” they reported.
