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Post-Handoff Reports of Outcomes

Project Description

Accurate and timely diagnosis is key to avoiding patient harms from delays in appropriate therapy, exposure to ineffective treatments and unnecessary tests with potential false-positive results. In order for clinicians to be able to hone and calibrate their decision-making, they must get ongoing feedback of the outcomes of their diagnosis and treatment decisions. Frequent handoffs hinder this feedback. At the same time, we are not taking full advantage of a potential positive aspect of these handoffs--having multiple clinicians caring for a single patient provides built-in second opinions.

The PHAROS (Post-Handoff Reports of Outcomes) project aims to use the capabilities of the electronic health record to create personalized summaries that:

  1. Enable clinicians to efficiently identify patients recently under their care
  2. Highlight some important events and outcomes that occurred after the care of the patient was handed off to another provider

Project Team: 

Robert El-Kareh, M.D., M.P.H., M.S. 

Samantha Hurst, Ph.D., M.A.

Aaron Kemp, M.S.