Provider Perception of Patient-Initiated Communication for Non-Essential Tasks

The EPIC MyChart Bedside iPad application aims to make patient-provider communication more personalized and efficient and to provide patients with access to medical education information and electronic health records during their hospital stay. The purpose of this on-going study is to learn the impacts of the application on healthcare provider workflow and satisfaction. Data presented here is from the first phase of data collection which was collected before the implementation of the Bedside application. Observational and survey data was collected from 32 registered nurses (RNs) and personal care assistants (PCAs) (mean age = 33; sd = 12) before the implementation of the Bedside application in three inpatient hospital units of a large hospital in Southeastern Texas. Results highlighted three main issues in provider workflow in regards to patient-initiated communication: 1) providers have insufficient information about the requested task at the time of request, 2) there is no running task list for the provider to refer to and 3) the incorrect care provider is often notified to perform a task. It is hypothesized that the implementation of the Bedside application will mitigate these issues by directly notifying the correct care provider and by populating specific tasks to a task list that the providers can refer to from their workstations.