A new clinical decision support tool developed by
researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham & Women's Hospital in
Boston can increase the completeness of patient problem lists in
electronic health records (EHRs). Having all of a patient's diagnoses on
a single list helps physicians provide better care, because they're
more likely to treat a condition such as diabetes or hypertension if
they're reminded of that problem when a patient visits.
Unfortunately, as a recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association noted, medical problem lists are often incomplete.
In a previous study of a primary care network affiliated with Brigham
& Women's, the authors found that "completeness ... ranged from 4.7%
for renal insufficiency or failure to 50.7% for hypertension, 61.9% for
diabetes, to a maximum of 78.5% for breast cancer, and other
institutions have found similar results."
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