Work

How Soon Is Too Soon? Triaging Inpatient Transthoracic Echocardiogram Orders to Reduce Turnaround Times

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Increases in inpatient transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) orders at our tertiary care center have led to longer image-acquisition times and affected hospital length of stay. PROJECT RATIONALE: Our data showed that 22.9% of all TTEs ordered in 2023 were designated as pending discharge (PD) priority level in comparison to 6.8% in 2018. There was concern that providers were inappropriately ordering the PD TTE priority in an attempt to bypass the inpatient TTE queue. PROJECT SUMMARY: Our initial attempt at utilizing flyers to educate providers on PD TTE ordering criteria did not result in improvements. However, within months of implementing an electronic medical record system intervention, we reduced the proportion of PD TTE orders by 14.4% and reduced the mean routine TTE image acquisition time by 49.6%. TAKE-HOME MESSAGES: An electronic medical record hard stop proved to be a more consistent method in enforcing decision-making and improving the workflow process for appropriate ordering of inpatient TTEs.

Source: JACC Case Reports

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaccas.2025.105667

Authors: Kenny Vongbunyong, Robert Tungate, Fjolla Muqolli, Tyson Burnham, Jin Kyung Kim

Institutions: University of California, Irvine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Columbia University

Language: English

Topic: Electronic Health Records Systems

Subfield: Health Information Management

Field: Health Professions

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $850