Enhancing Patient Care and Care Coordination using Event Notification Systems

Event notification systems (ENS) are being deployed to provide timely alerts to participating providers when their patients are being admitted, discharged or transferred (ADT) from participating hospitals. Hospitals and health information exchanges (HIE) are implementing ENS in an effort to reduce costly hospital readmissions and to improve the overall quality of patient care through improved care coordination. Today, there are numerous ENS actively facilitating care coordination across the country. For those participating providers and hospitals, coordination has been significantly improved and hospital readmissions have been reduced. Furthermore, patients and clinicians report improved patient care and care coordination, and report higher levels of patient satisfaction. Despite reported success, the application and implementation of ENS vary across the country. Some of the variability stems from the challenges that are inherent to the design of the ENS. These challenges, discussed herein, require careful consideration in order to fully realize ENS benefits.