An Informatics Solution for Inpatient Malnutrition
Informatics can be very beneficial in providing safe, quality care when usability is considered (Middleton et al., 2013). Informatics promotes patient-centered care and serves to educate health professionals (Rouleau, Gagnon, & Côté, 2015). The aim of this paper is to detail how the process of malnutrition screening may be improved using an informatics solution. This process will be outlined from scope of the problem through implementation to evaluation.
Formulation and Scope of Problem
Over the past four decades, researchers have identified malnutrition as being highly prevalent in acute care hospitals (Barker, Gout & Crowe, 2011). More recently, Canadian literature shows that 45% of hospitalized …show more content…
The EMR system will fire off a dietitian consult for all high-risk patients for nutritional assessment, thereby helping the entire inter-professional team to identify at-risk patients.
The identified problem is that the current NYGH nutrition screening tool is ineffectively being utilized and therefore high-risk patients are not being identified, assessed or treated with optimal nutritional therapy.
NYGH research supports the implementation of a new electronic MST (Appendix B). There is a clear need at NYGH, to eliminate the current nutrition screening tool from the EMR and replace it with a validated, user-friendly MST, whereby the entire inter-professional team would be able to identify high-risk patients upon admission and provide timely nutrition intervention.
Significance of Informatics Problem
Established in 1968, NYGH is one of Canada's leading community teaching hospitals specializing in clinical areas such as cancer care, pediatrics, elderly care, mental health, and surgery. Five years ago, NYGH was the first Canadian hospital to implement an eCare strategy. The result was implementation of electronic records and a Computerized Provider Order Entry system (North York General Hospital, …show more content…
Embedded within the eight-page admission form, was a nutritional screening tool that was intended only for patients to assess their nutritional risk. The nutrition tool involved nurses asking patients to answer seven nutrition related questions as well as obtaining the patent’s height and weight. Height and weight were required for the admission nurse to manually calculate a patient’s body mass index (BMI). Only three nursing education sessions were scheduled to train staff on the nutrition screening tool along with five other electronic hospital forms, over the course of a three-day period. As part of the roll out plan, access to designated forms was secured to allow only specific healthcare professionals to have read and write access. This access depended on their clinical area and job functions. The Registered Dietitians (RD) could not assist in completing this nutrition screening tool as they did not have access to the nurse admission