Electronic epidemiological query on admission: 6 clicks for global risk assessment

Introduction / objectives

Epidemiologically Important Microorganisms (EIM) reduction is a major aim of infection control. EIM are widely spread and shared between patients in several care settings. e-health, defined as intensive use of information and communication technologies, can be a major part of this strategy.

Methods

Aiming both detection of these patients on admission and immediate implementation of procedures, Infection Control Committee (ICC) and Information Technologies team of Hospital da Luz (a high-tech, 280-bed general hospital), created an Electronic Epidemiological Query on Admission (EEQA) on the Electronic Medical Registry (EMR). EEQA comprises 6 Yes/No questions to be fulfilled by the physician in charge of admission. If at least 1 question has a positive answer (positive EEQA), it automatically generates infection control prescriptions on the EMR (specific isolation procedures for contact, airborne, droplets or Cdiff); screening cultures (nasal MRSA, rectal MRSA, VRE and MR Acinetobacter) or Cdiff toxin screening; activation of biohazard symbol and ICC information in order to follow-up.

Results

For the first 50 EEQAs (starting on February), 70% were positive, resulting on measures implemented for 35 patients, with 77% global sensitivity. MRSA is the main EIM (67% sensitivity for patients who were admitted with history of health-care or long-term care stay for at least 3 days in the past 3 months).

Conclusion

The implementation of the EEQA is an innovative approach that uses the e-health concept, allowing immediate automatic detection of high risk patients on admission, avoiding the gap of time until release of screening results. With 6 clicks, 6⁶ different protocols can be generated without any additional effort to physicians, improving quality of care.

Disclosure of interest

None declared.