The Coronavirus tracking tool aims to identify and assess clinicians who come into contact with the virus.Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have implemented a tool into the EHR that aims to help identify staff members who have come into contact with the coronavirus or tested positive for the virus, according to an article on KTTC.com, a local news station out of Rochester, Minnesota.
“It’s actually several digital tools that we’ve developed to assist with our healthcare worker contact tracing and exposure investigation,” Laura Breeher, MD, occupational health services medical director at Mayo Clinic, told the outlet.
First using the data that has been extracted by the tool, it allows the higher-ups to submit a list of clinicians who have been exposed to a COVID-19 patient at the Mayo Clinic.
“They would be able to go through their records and list not only those employees that may have charted in the electronic medical record, but also employees that had close contact with that patient that may not have charted in the medical record,” said Breeher.
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Next, researchers developed a risk assessment questionnaire for at-risk employees to detail their interaction with the patient and if they experience COVID-19 symptoms.
“Whether that was less than six feet, whether if it was more than five minutes, what personal protective equipment they were wearing, or if they have any symptoms so we can very quickly access,” continued Breeher.
According to the Mayo Clinic, it can take some health systems days to identify clinicians or patients who are at-risk, but with this tool, they can diagnose COVID-19 within hours.
“Here at Mayo we wanted to make sure that we are doing this as rapidly as we can,” she continued.
Researchers began to build the tool just three weeks ago and it has thus far been implemented at the Rochester campus. The clinic expects it to be implemented at both the Florida and Arizona campuses this week.
“By doing this contract tracing, we’re removing those individuals that may develop COVID in the next couple weeks from interacting with other healthcare workers and patients,” Breeher concluded.
Researchers say that this tool could be optimized to track future viruses or diseases.
Epic Systems is also doing its part to optimize the EHR and develop tools to help limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“Biocontainment experts, infectious disease physicians and researchers, and other clinicians are working with Epic to help healthcare organizations meet the challenges of this outbreak with confidence,” wrote the company in a press release.
Epic is utilizing its Care Everywhere interoperability network to allow both Epic users and users of other vendors know about potential exposure risks, while also sharing patient travel screening information and infection status.
Patients are also able to use patient portal questionnaires to get screened for coronavirus at home, rather than visiting a medical center.
With some clinicians asking for travel history to be implemented into the EHR, Epic created a report system to track and follow up with patients who haven’t been screened for travel to coronavirus hotbed regions. Users may also utilize these reports to monitor quarantine status and follow up with patients who possibly have the virus or are confirmed to have the virus.
The vendor also created an analytic tool, SlicerDicer, which is a search tool showing where patients with COVID-19 are living. They can then send an alert to patients in that area showing that it’s an infected zip code.
Epic is using its software to identify potential cases and limit the spread of the virus.
Source: EHR Intelligence