Physician Executive Leader Shares Clinician-Friendly Tech Adoption Playbook at CHIME23 Fall Forum

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Nov 08, 2023, 09:00 ET

FDB Targeted Medication Warnings^™ ease improvement of medication alert relevance in the EHR workflow

PHOENIX, Nov. 8, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A physician executive leader from a long-time customer of FDB (First Databank, Inc.), the leading provider of drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, will share real-world lessons on how to earn clinician buy-in and long-term engagement in health IT projects large and small, even during a time of historic staffing challenges.

Donald Levick, MD, MBA, CPE, FHIMSS, a practicing pediatrician and the former chief medical information officer at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), will share his presentation, "Pulling Along Tech Change Without Pushing Clinicians Over the Edge" at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Fall Forum, November 9-12 in Phoenix.

"Many organizations today are wary of introducing changes to providers' workflows," said Dr. Levick, who has built his clinician-friendly tech-adoption playbook since 2000. "If new systems and changes are selected and executed correctly and collaboratively, launching a clinician-led IT workflow change in this environment can actually help reduce provider burnout by eliminating tech-related drudgery and increasing meaningful time with patients."

Managing Changes Large and Small

Dr. Levick led numerous health IT projects over two decades that required clinician buy-in and adoption – including an Epic EHR implementation. The Epic launch and associated change management effort were enormous. Yet smaller, incremental tech improvements to an existing EHR, such as implementing FDB Targeted Medication Warnings™ to optimize select medication safety alerts, require change management steps, too. Dr. Levick's presentation includes hard-earned, real-world advice and best practices for managing IT adoption with clinicians, including how to generate interest – or even excitement – around the smaller ones.

For example, Dr. Levick introduced an initiative to help reduce the number of drug-drug interaction notifications that clinicians received warning them of potential hyperkalemia (high blood potassium levels) in patients. Clinicians at LVHN were frequently overriding these alerts because they were being fired at inappropriate times and were not relevant to the patient in the current clinical context.

Dr. Levick formed a multidisciplinary team and collaboratively worked with FDB to implement FDB Targeted Medication Warnings to make these alerts more patient-specific. FDB's "patient-first" approach to optimizing medication decision support integrates additional inputs, including lab results, genomic markers, and clinical scoring/surveillance systems, to achieve a highly personalized notification at the point of care.

The inclusive, collective effort initiated by Dr. Levick resulted in a 70% reduction in the volume of irrelevant, non-actionable hyperkalemia alerts. Likewise, providers cut their overrides of hyperkalemia alerts in half. The change improved the clinician experience while protecting patients' safety and health.

Another major factor in earning clinician buy-in for this change and others was to first find a clinician champion (or "influencer" in today's parlance) to build engagement among other providers. Dr. Levick also conducted a deep data analysis of clinician behaviors to determine which alerts were being ignored the most. Another factor was that this EHR optimization required no formal training sessions for most clinicians and was highly intuitive. Acceptance of alerts jumped from less than 20% to more than 60%, indicating much higher relevancy to providers at that right point in their workflow – and likely less tech-related frustration.

"Preventing 'alert fatigue' among clinicians is important, but preventing 'change fatigue' may, in turn, be a more pressing issue today," said Dr. Levick. "By introducing and implementing health IT changes the right way, organizations can take advantage of innovative new tools that help protect patient safety and improve outcomes, while at the same time, improve their clinicians' experiences."

Dr. Levick's informal and interactive presentation is part of "The Human Side of Digital Health" education track and will be delivered on Saturday, November 11, at 11:15 a.m. in the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa conference room.

About FDB
FDB (First Databank) creates and delivers the world's most powerful drug knowledge that ignites, inspires, and illuminates critical medication decisions. We collaborate with our partners to help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and health outcomes. Our drug databases drive healthcare information systems that serve the majority of hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, payers, and all other areas of healthcare and are used by millions of clinicians, business associates, and patients every day. Please visit us at https://www.fdbhealth.com/, or follow us on X, LinkedIn and YouTube.

About Hearst Health
The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person's health journey. Care guidance from Hearst Health reaches the majority of people in the U.S. The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase and MHK. Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2Gen. Follow Hearst Health on Twitter @HearstHealth or LinkedIn @Hearst-Health.