We Can't Fix It If We Don't Know About It: Increasing Event Reporting with a QuickSubmit Form

The widespread perception throughout the healthcare system in the United States is that ambulatory care is a safer, lower risk environment for patients and caregivers. This is despite the complex dynamics that exist in the ambulatory care space, including multiprofessional teams, transitions of care across multiple specialties, and a dependence on the patient’s ability to self-manage complex conditions. The literature also reflects that a primary barrier to caregiver event reporting is the perceived lack of time to report. The baseline average event reporting time across the health system was 10 minutes, with an average event reporting time of 12 minutes in the ambulatory care practices. This provided an opportunity identified by an interdisciplinary team including nursing, physicians, practice leadership, and front-line caregivers to put in place an evidence-based intervention. The goal was to design and implement a QuickSubmit event reporting form, decrease the amount of time it takes to submit an event report by 25%, and therefore increase the total number of events entered by 10%.
The intervention was the customization of a QuickSubmit form designed by the interdisciplinary team in the enterprise’s reporting platform. Specific interventions included improving user interface by reduction of required redundant fields, use of natural language prompts in place of the severity level scale, instructions for the brief factual description portion of the form, and a single point of reporting for multiple patient-centered general event types, resulting in a shortened event report form with a more intuitive and time-saving workflow for caregivers entering events. The project was piloted in six primary care practices for three months followed by implementation enterprise wide.
Baseline data reflects an average event report submission time of 12 minutes in ambulatory care practices. Post-intervention, the time to enter an event report submission decreased by 48.3% or 6.23 minutes. Statistical analysis of the length of time it took to submit a standard event submission report vs. the QuickSubmit event submission report showed statistical significance with a p = 0.0064 with a confidence interval 95% (1.83-10.65). The average number of event submissions increased from 6.5 per month to 9.75, which is an increase of 50%.
Therefore, the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the interventions by surpassing the goal to decrease event reporting time by 25% and increase number of event reports submitted by 10%.
The goal of decreasing event reporting time and increasing number of event submissions entered was met and surpassed. The results indicate a 48.3% decrease in time to report an event using the QuickSubmit form intervention. The results also reflect a 50% increase in the average number of event submissions using the QuickSubmit form intervention. The implementation of a QuickSubmit form eliminating redundancy, using plain-language questions, providing guidance, and allowing for a single point of reporting for multiple event types, proved effective.
Lessons learned include caregiver relationship building and consistent messaging are foundational to establishing engagement and caregiver awareness at the local level.