
Home Research Community acquired pneumonia Pre-op screening Legionella detection Virtual Sentinel Node Falls Risk Assessment CV Line Cost Benefit Health Systems Analysis Topics Courses People Links

Health Informatics Unit
The University of Adelaide
SA 5005 Australia
Email

Telephone:
+61 8 8274 3713
Facsimile:
+61 8 8271 9158

Workflow in the Treatment of Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP)

Scott Clark

Health Informatics, University of Adelaide

Preliminary CAP treatment workflow studies were centred in the Emergency Department of a teaching hospital. A small convenience sample (n=5) of patients of varying risk and severity were observed in order to construct a preliminary model of workflow, information flow and key decisions in CAP treatment. Sequence diagrams (see figure 1) were then used to map this information in order to identify key dependencies between information, decisions and processes of care. Sequence diagrams were also be used to identify stakeholders in the care process, possible risk interventions and use cases for those interventions [ 1 ]

Process timing data from a CAP patient database containing demographic, symptom and sign, investigation result and administration data from over 600 cases was then used to quantify the average timing of each process.

Our studies indicated that potential risk exists in the timeliness of reviewing important test and radiology results. We plan to design and implement an alerting system for the investigation results of CAP patients in the Emergency Department at a teaching hospital.

Further studies will include an investigation of the effect of patient risk factors and disease severity on treatment process timing and the effect of process timing on outcomes.

Figure 1: Sample Sequence Diagram

References

1. Pradhan, M., Edmonds., M., Runciman, W. ( 2001 ) Quality in Healthcare: Process. Best Practice & Research Clinical Anaesthesiology . 2001 ; 15 ( 4 ): 555 - 571 .