Reply to: Patient and physician perceptions after software-assisted hospital discharge: Cluster randomized trial

✍ Scribed by James F. Graumlich

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1553-5592
• DOI: 10.1002/jhm.635

✦ Synopsis

Discharge summary is considered a testimony of the quality of care provided to a patient. The generation of an errorfree, concise, and at the same time comprehensive summary according to the principles of continued care goes a long way toward enhancing the quality of healthcare.

Graumlich et al. 1 intended to study the impact of software-assisted discharge summary generation; however, it appears that this study has a fundamental flaw in its design. The computerized physician order entry (CPOE) software was used as stand-alone software and was not integrated with the hospital electronic medical records. The study group had to reenter the data into a form. The control group also sourced the information from the hospital's electronic medical records and filled in the discharge form given to them. This implies that the results of the study only reflect the ability of inpatient physicians to key in the data vs. writing by hand! One of the major concerns about software-generated summaries has been a higher error rate. 2 It is no surprise that in this study physicians themselves were entering the data to the form; therefore, error rates were not significant. Therefore, this study design does not seem to be aligned with the aims of the study. Thus, the conclusion from this study missed more significant impacts of this intervention that otherwise could have been highlighted.

The content of a discharge summary is dictated by the 'form' used. This can either be the template form used to write or the 'form' in the software. This is usually a predetermined format based on the expected output required as per the policies of the hospital with regard to the discharge summary.