Disparities Associated With Electronic Behavioral Alerts for Safety and Violence Concerns in the Emergency Department.

ABSTRACT:

Study objective

Although electronic behavioral alerts are placed as an alert flag in the electronic health record to notify staff of previous behavioral and/or violent incidents in emergency departments (EDs), they have the potential to reinforce negative perceptions of patients and contribute to bias. We provide characterization of ED electronic behavioral alerts using electronic health record data across a large, regional health care system.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study of adult patients presenting to 10 adult EDs within a Northeastern United States health care system from 2013 to 2022. Electronic behavioral alerts were manually screened for safety concerns and then categorized by the type of concern. In our patient-level analyses, we included

SUBMITTER: Haimovich AD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10689576 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature