Shared decision-making at end-of-life is aided by graphical trending of illness severity.

The Rothman Index (RI) gives a visual picture of patient's condition and progress for the physician and family to view together. This case demonstrates how the RI graph facilitates physician-family communication. An 85-year-old man with normal pressure hydrocephalus and ventriculoperitoneal shunt presented with a subdural haematoma. He required a temporoparietal craniotomy and evacuation of left subdural haematoma, followed by care in an intensive inpatient rehabilitation unit. His course was complicated by aspiration pneumonia, dehydration, renal failure and phenytoin toxicity. During hospitalisation, the patient's RI graph was reviewed daily with his family. The RI provided an unambiguous visualisation of the trend of patient acuity, which depicted the patient's persistent decline in health, and made clear to the family the situation of the patient. This clarity was instrumental in prompting frank discussions of prognosis and consideration of comfort measures, resulting in timely transfer to hospice.

Measuring the modified early warning score and the Rothman index: advantages of utilizing the electronic medical record in an early warning system.

Early detection of an impending cardiac or pulmonary arrest is an important focus for hospitals trying to improve quality of care. Unfortunately, all current early warning systems suffer from high false-alarm rates. Most systems are based on the Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS); 4 of its 5 inputs are vital signs. The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of MEWS against the Rothman Index (RI), a patient acuity score based upon summation of excess risk functions that utilize additional data from the electronic medical record (EMR). MEWS and RI scores were computed retrospectively for 32,472 patient visits. Nursing assessments, a category of EMR inputs only used by the RI, showed sharp differences 24 hours before death. Receiver operating characteristic curves for 24-hour mortality demonstrated superior RI performance with c-statistics, 0.82 and 0.93, respectively. At the point where MEWS triggers an alarm, we identified the RI point corresponding to equal sensitivity and found the positive likelihood ratio (LR+) for MEWS was 7.8, and for the RI was 16.9 with false alarms reduced by 53%. At the RI point corresponding to equal LR+, the sensitivity for MEWS was 49% and 77% for RI, capturing 54% more of those patients who will die within 24 hours.

Clinical implications and validity of nursing assessments: a longitudinal measure of patient condition from analysis of the Electronic Medical Record.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates risk of mortality associated with nurses' assessments of patients by physiological system. We hypothesise that nursing assessments of in-patients performed at entry correlate with in-hospital mortality, and those performed just before discharge correlate with postdischarge mortality. DESIGN: Cohort study of in-hospital and postdischarge mortality of patients over two 1-year periods. SETTING: An 805-bed community hospital in Sarasota, Florida, USA. SUBJECTS: 42 302 inpatients admitted for any reason, excluding obstetrics, paediatric and psychiatric patients. OUTCOME MEASURES: All-cause mortalities and mortality OR. RESULTS: Patients whose entry nursing assessments, other than pain, did not meet minimum standards had significantly higher in-hospital mortality than patients meeting minimums; and final nursing assessments before discharge had large OR for postdischarge mortality. In-hospital mortality OR were found to be: food, 7.0; neurological, 9.4; musculoskeletal, 6.9; safety, 5.6; psychosocial, 6.7; respiratory, 8.1; skin, 5.2; genitourinary, 3.0; gastrointestinal, 2.3; peripheral-vascular, 3.9; cardiac, 2.8; and pain, 1.1. CI at 95% are within ±20% of these values, with p<0.001 (except for pain). Similar results applied to postdischarge mortality. All results were comparable across the two 1-year periods, with 0.85 intraclass correlation coefficient. CONCLUSIONS: Nursing assessments are strongly correlated with in-hospital and postdischarge mortality. No multivariate analysis has yet been performed, and will be the subject of a future study, thus there may be confounding factors. Nonetheless, we conclude that these assessments are clinically meaningful and valid. Nursing assessment data, which are currently unused, may allow physicians to improve patient care. The mortality OR and the dynamic nature of nursing assessments suggest that nursing assessments are sensitive indicators of a patient's condition. While these conclusions must remain qualified, pending future multivariate analyses, nursing assessment data ought to be incorporated in risk-related health research, and changes in record-keeping software are needed to make this information more accessible.