Order Indication Solicitation to Assess Clinical Laboratory Test Utilization: D-Dimer Order Patterns as an Illustrative Case.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A common challenge in the development of laboratory clinical decision support (CDS) and laboratory utilization management (UM) initiatives stems from the fact that many laboratory tests have multiple potential indications, limiting the ability to develop context-specific alerts. As a potential solution, we designed a CDS alert that asks the ordering clinician to provide the indication for testing, using D-dimer as an exemplar. Using data collected over a nearly 3-year period, we sought to determine whether the indication capture was a useful feature within the CDS alert and whether it provided actionable intelligence to guide the development of an UM strategy.

Methods

We extracted results and ordering data for D-dimer testing performed in our laboratory over a 35-

SUBMITTER: Rudolf JW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6909549 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature