Improving Quality & Equity of Emergency Care Decisions (IQED) (IQED)

National Institute on Aging (NIA), University of California, Los Angeles, Olive View-UCLA Education & Research Institute, LAC+USC Medical Center, University of California, Davis

Recent work in emergency medicine has shown errors were more likely to occur at the end of shifts, as pressure exists to make a number of decisions simultaneously, and after what may be an already long series of cognitive challenges. Decision fatigue may also contribute to disparities by surfacing subconscious bias. The objective of the R21 pilot phase of Improving Quality & Equity of Emergency Care Decisions (IQED) is to identify addressable gaps in quality and equity and use performance feedback as an intervention to improve performance on chest pain, CT imaging, and antibiotic prescribing. Performance feedback intervention will include feedback offline via email or text.

The objective of the R21 pilot phase of Improving Quality & Equity of Emergency Care Decisions (IQED) is to identify addressable gaps in quality and equity and use performance feedback as an intervention to improve performance on chest pain, CT imaging, and antibiotic prescribing. Performance feedback intervention will include feedback offline via email or text. Each clinician will be randomized at the provider or clinic level to either the intervention or control group. Once clinicians are randomized, the aforementioned intervention will be turned on for a 3-6 month time period. For providers in the intervention group, the goal is to evaluate the effect of social norms on overuse and underuse behavior related to prescriptions or testing. Near real-time social norms will be delivered to providers which benchmark their own performance on various metrics to that of their peers. The investigators performance feedback reports for each provider randomized to receive the audit and feedback intervention will have three key characteristics: (1) each target provider will receive his or her individual performance, (2) benchmarks will prominently feature the performance of providers who would be considered credible peers of the target provider, and (3) benchmarks will reflect only performance that is desirable (e.g., showing only the performance of the best-performing credible peers). Providers randomized to the control group will follow standard practice.

Efficacy of behavioral nudges to improve quality and safety in Emergency Medicine through measurement of adherence to guidelines: Chest Pain

Measurement of clinician adherence to guidelines for quality measures related to chest pain (proportion of cases in which HEART score algorithm was used for chest pain patients)

Efficacy of behavioral nudges to improve quality and safety in Emergency Medicine through measurement of adherence to guidelines: CT imaging

Measurement of clinician adherence to guidelines for quality measures related to CT imaging (proportion of orders for unnecessary CT scans)

Efficacy of behavioral nudges to improve quality and safety in Emergency Medicine through measurement of adherence to guidelines: Antibiotic prescribing

Measurement of clinician adherence to guidelines for quality measures related to antibiotic prescribing (proportion of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions for acute respiratory infections)

Inclusion Criteria: Attendings and residents that see patients in the Emergency Department. Exclusion Criteria: None