VistA Clinical Reminders and Reminder Patient Lists

Rob Silverman, PharmD

Hines VA Hospital

March 20, 2007

Session Objectives

Understand the vocabulary of technical terms associated with the VistA Clinical Reminders package

Recognize the potential capabilities of a clinical reminder and a reminder patient list for two aspects common to research: patient cohort selection and rapid data extraction

Understand the relative processing time that certain applications of clinical reminders would be expected to take

VistA Clinical Reminders
        - The Clinical Reminders package is basically designed as a tool to provide point-of-care information with regard to clinical practice guidelines

Clinical Reminder Terminology
        - Terms common to researchers are often novel to programmers and application coordinators

Clinical Reminder Terminology

COHORT – the group to which a reminder applies, not necessarily 100% of the sample

APPLICABLE – does a given patient fall into the reminder’s cohort?

DUE – does the computer think that there is something to be done for the patient to meet the selected guideline?

More terminology

RESOLVED/SATISFIED – opposite of “due”, does the computer think that the patient has had whatever treatment/intervention is warranted by the guideline?

FREQUENCY – how often should the selected intervention be performed?  (monthly, annually, once in a lifetime, etc.)

Clinical Reminder Processing
        - Is the patient in the cohort?
        - What is the patient-specific frequency for the reminder?
        - Has the patient had any of the possible interventions performed?
        - Was the most recent instance of the intervention within the designated time frame?

Clinical Reminder Processing
        - The preceding 4 items (sample, cohort, resolution and frequency) are all evaluated SEPARATELY by VistA and can lead to potentially confusing results.

Use of Clinical Reminders
        - Do you need to use the clinical reminder dialog (templated progress note writing tool) to record the selected intervention?
        - PROCESS measurements
        - OUTCOME measurements
        - Example: ordering HgbA1c for a diabetic vs. documenting risk factors for hepatitis C

Clinical Reminders in CPRS GUI
        - Cover Sheet
        - Clock Menu
        - Reminders Drawer
        - These are all SINGLE PATIENT applications of the clinical reminders package.
        - Cover Sheet Reminders vs. Reporting Reminders

Clinical Reminders in VistA
        - Reminder Reports
        - Reminder Patient Lists (NEW!)
        - Well, not really new, but less understood by the field, so as education is provided, it becomes the tool du jour.
        - Who has access to these reports?
        - Data Requests
        - Exportability of reminder definitions

Reminder Reports
        - You define the sample
        - Individually selected patients
        - Existing CPRS teams
        - Primary Care (PCMM) teams or “panels”
        - Previously generated reminder patient lists
        - Locations
        - Patients seen in certain clinics or stop codes
        - Currently admitted patients or admissions during a given time frame

Reminder Report Output
        - Given the sample, the computer can evaluate the cohort, and for each patient, determine if the reminder applies and whether it has been resolved
        - The typical output is a list of patients with the reminder DUE

Reminder Reports vs. Patient Lists
        - Reminder Patient Lists have an advantage over Reminder Reports in the areas of:
        - Speed (CPU Efficiency)
        - Sample (defined cohort or the entire local database)
        - Output (list of patients MEETING the defined conditions instead of those NOT MEETING the criteria ... avoids double negatives in the computer logic)

Reminder Patient Lists
        - Same components as clinical reminders
        - New terminology
        - Reminder definitions used COHORT and RESOLUTION
        - Patient lists use FINDING RULES, REMINDER RULES, and PATIENT LIST RULES to make RULE SETS which are used to generate PATIENT LISTS

Mathematics and Logic
        - Reminder definitions
        - AND, OR & AND NOT
        - Patient lists
        - ADD PATIENT (OR)
        - SELECT (AND)
        - REMOVE (AND NOT)
        - Life is one big SEQUENCE
        - So, does order really matter?
        - Add Diabetics, Select Foot Exam 
        - Add Foot Exam, Select Diabetics

References and Related Topics
        - VeHU 2006 course 309H Patient Lists
        - VeHU (Intranet) Site Hyperlink
        - Clinical Reminders Distance Learning Course #3 Reminder Reports and Patient Lists
        - Copies of presentations available
        - Reminders Troubleshooting page
        - VistA (Intranet) Site Hyperlink

Ok, enough background ... on to some research applications
        - These are all real examples used in practice either at Hines or in response to a query from another station

A1c Performance Measure
        - All diabetic patients should have a Hgb A1c measured at least annually, goal ≤ 9%
        - Chart review of patients seen in a given provider’s clinic recently
        - use a patient list of patients seen (ADD)
        - that are diabetic (SELECT) 
        - display information about their A1c value, their diagnosis codes, and their primary care assignment

Hem/Onc High Risk Drugs
        - Ensure all patients on a group of high risk drugs are followed by the unit’s clinical nurse specialist 
        - No patient shall “fall through the cracks”
        - Create a patient list of all patients receiving the selected drugs in a given time frame
        - Alternative: Create a reminder that is applicable/due for patients on the selected drugs, with no “resolution logic”

Influenza Vaccination Measures
        - Inpatient monitoring
        - Use a clinical reminder to identify all inpatients (sample) that should receive a flu shot (cohort) and have not already had it (resolution)
        - Employee vaccination rates
        - Use a patient list to count all flu shots given
        - Reuse that same list to identify employees – CPU efficiency! (numerator)
        - Compare the employee count against personnel records (denominator)

Pharmacy Chart Reviews
        - Identify all patients admitted to the long term care unit between dates x and y
        - Create a reminder with no logic
        - Run the reminder against known LTC locations
        - Save the “due” patients (everyone) to a patient list

New diagnosis of spinal cord injury
        - Ensure that all newly diagnosed patients are seen in the appropriate SCI locations
        - Patient List
        - Identify all patients with an SCI diagnosis between dates x and y (ADD PATIENT)
        - Remove patients with records of the same diagnoses prior to date x (REMOVE)

Monthly Performance Measure Reporting Process – VISN 12
        - Via Clinical Reminders
        - Each site would manually run the Reminders Due Report for the nexus clinics as defined in the OQP Technical Manual

Monthly Performance Measure Reporting Process – VISN 12
        - Via Reminder Patient Lists (Extracts)
        - VistA will automatically run the report on the 1st of the month
        - Subcohorts, Veteran eligibility, Terminal illness exclusions, Anchor visit

Excel-Ready Formatting
        - Is data available in “delimited format” to be translated into a database table?
        - Reminder Reports
        - Available both readable and delimited
        - Remember: the data presented is about patients with the selected clinical reminder “due” ... basically just a list of who they are

Excel-Ready Formatting for Patient Lists
        - The standard output of a patient list is delimited
        - Data is available for information related to
        - Address/Phone, Future Appointments, Demographics (SSN, DOB, etc.), Eligibility, Inpatient details
        - Data is only available if added by the requestor related to clinical information such as
        - Lab results, Diagnosis codes (problem list, encounter data), Drug history and medication profile, 
        - NOTE: EACH result type is added separately, since it’s a separate column!