Patient Encounter Tracking

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Patient Encounter Tracking Student Evaluations

• Kevin W. Brewer, MBALead Analyst/ProgrammerOffic
  e of Academic Computing

September 12, 2005 Graylyn Conference on
Technology Innovation in Medical Education
2
Patient Tracking History

• Spring 2000 Spring 2002
• Palm OS
• Single application for all clerkships
• Application expanded in 2001 to gather more data
• Data answered basic questions only
• Types of patients encountered on each clerkship
• Application was cumbersome, too many screens
  applied to one clerkship and not another
• Third party application development tool

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Patient Tracking History

• Spring 2003
• Switched to the Pocket PC Operating System
• Still a single application for all clerkships
• Third party application development tool
• Major problems with switch to new OS for this
  tool
• Spring 2004
• Continued with Pocket PC Operating System
• Developed new application in house
• Visual Studio 2003, Smart Device Applications
• Customized application for each clerkship
• Smooth sailing with new application

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Patient Tracking Present

• Spring 2005
• Remain on Pocket PC platform
• Further customized each clerkships version of
  the application
• Other diagnosis fields with intelligence to
  list previously entered items
• Further reduced manual entry through the use of
  checkboxes and drop lists
• Expanded data entry to match students with
  residents and faculty
• Dovetailed the encounter tracking system with the
  on-line, student evaluation system

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Patient Tracking Demonstration

• Emergency Medicine Application

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Old Evaluation System - Paper

• Administrative Personnel Responsibilities
• Review schedule for faculty/student shift matches
• Print form, write names, mail to faculty or
  resident via interoffice
• Silent prayer and crossed fingers hoping to get
  them back
• Manual review of overdue evaluations
• 60 response rate for evaluations

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New Evaluation System 100 On-Line

• Synchronized data is stored in central curriculum
  database
• System generated E-mail reminders go to faculty
  once shift reaches certain age
• Increased frequency of reminders as overdue
  evaluations age
• Decreased workload on administrative personnel
• 95 response rate for evaluations

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Faculty Entry Point
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Evaluation Form
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Student Encounter Report
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Additional Reports
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Patient Tracking Reports

• Advanced questions can now be answered
• What were the student encounters under one
  faculty preceptor vs. another?
• How do encounters compare among students in the
  same rotation group?
• Which faculty are overdue on student evaluations?
• Why are some students heavily exposed to simple
  diagnoses and others are not?

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Implementation Status

• Emergency Medicine in production
• Neurology in production
• Inpatient Medicine in planning