Pre-assessing patient education to increase nurse compliance with documentation

Cardiovascular disease continues to be a global health concern and is responsible for more than 17 million deaths every year. In the United States, readmissions for heart failure and heart attacks cause financial strains on the healthcare system. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have reduced reimbursement for readmissions for some cardiac issues, which has caused healthcare systems to find ways to prevent these readmissions. Patient education has proven to decrease readmissions in the heart failure population; however, there are some issues with nurse compliance for various reasons. A quality improvement project completed in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) aimed to determine if nurses would be more compliant with documenting disease-specific education topics on post-myocardial infarction patients if it was auto-populated in the electronic health record based on specific parameters. Prior to the intervention, compliance with documentation was 40%. After the education was auto-populated, compliance increased to 83%. There was also an increase in compliance with documentation on the telemetry unit as well. A survey was conducted with the CICU staff; 93% of staff felt they were more compliant, and 100% said the process was easier than remembering to add the education. Many staff gave examples of other education they would like to be auto-populated. Further research is needed to assess whether this education will decrease the readmissions of this patient population and partnerships with the electronic health record companies to streamline the education documentation process.