Mount Sinai’s daily checklists help clinicians track key care goals
When entering busy surgical intensive care units, clinicians sometimes find it challenging to know exactly where to focus. A daily checklist in Epic can help them assess a patient’s overall recovery and risk of infection, as well as identify their progress toward specific care goals like increased mobility. Since moving from a paper checklist to one in Epic, New York’s Mount Sinai Health System has reduced surgical ICU mortality by 28% and central line blood stream infections by 85%.
The checklist focuses on helping clinicians identify patients at risk of conditions like sepsis before they develop complications, helping them recover faster. Each member of a patient’s care team contributes to the checklist and can see when a patient’s care goals were last updated. As they document information in the checklist, clinicians can quickly place common ICU orders and view a summary of the patient’s chart.
Tools similar to Mount Sinai’s are available to new members of the Epic community in the Foundation System. Epic community members can download this program here and have Epic staff install it as part of Epic’s Services. If you’re interested contact programservices@epic.com. Epic community members interested in learning more about Mount Sinai’s approach to using checklists can check out their UGM presentation here.
