February 20, 2015 - Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center (Baltimore, MD) is using clinical decision support in their MEDITECH EHR to help eliminate unnecessary blood testing and save millions in the process.
The organization implemented a multimodal intervention to improve evidence-based ordering of cardiac biomarkers for the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome. They eliminated excessive troponin I tests and other cardiac injury biomarkers, such as Creatine phosphokinase (CK) or Creatine kinase-MB (CKMB), that are not as effective.
Over the course of just one year, providers at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center were able to reduce laboratory charges by $1.25 million. They also experienced a 66% decrease in unnecessary blood tests, and saw compliance with evidence-based ordering guidelines for cardiac biomarkers skyrocket—from 57.1% to 95.5%.
The medical center recently published their outcomes in the paper Reducing Excess Cardiac Biomarker Testing at an Academic Medical Center, which appeared in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
To learn more about John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center’s implementation and how they used their MEDITECH system to achieve these results, check out the CDSi document Lab Stewardship: Eliminating Unnecessary Blood Testing by Improving Evidence-based Ordering of Cardiac Biomarkers for Acute Coronary Syndrome.