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The CNO Perspective: Pathways to Quality 

April 28, 2015 - Donna Doherty, RN, draws on the strength of her nursing informatics team to support frontline nurses as they care for acutely ill patients. The team incorporates evidence-based practice, in the form of clinical pathways built into the EHR, to help these frontline nurses better care for patients. 

“We look at the evidence and figure out how these pathways can be incorporated in the MEDITECH EHR to help us educate the nurses and patients,” says Doherty, who is the VP of patient care services and CNO at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital (Plymouth, MA). “Physicians across the organization have immediate access to these pathways as well, so we’ve been able to reach an even higher level of standardization.”

To ensure that patient safety is always at the forefront, Doherty meets weekly with the Pathway Team—a group of nurses, nursing informatics analysts, physicians, and pharmacists—to discuss the clinical pathways and determine if they can improve on the protocols for their patient population. Any changes are then incorporated into the MEDITECH EHR. 

Doherty says all significant information related to the pathways, as well as pertinent patient data, is displayed on the MEDITECH Status Boards, including visual cues for easy identification of high-risk patients. These color-coded indicators, for vaccinations, infection prevention data, or any of the core quality measures, display on all Status Boards throughout the EHR, including the Emergency Department Tracker. 

“We use the color pink to highlight patients with obstructive sleep apnea on the Status Board,” says Doherty. “If the patient meets specific criteria on our questionnaire, they fall into a high-risk category and will be cared for differently, with different protocols.”