Real-Time Intraoperative Consultation Reporting in the Electronic Health Record: An Innovative Method to Enhance Communication and Promote Patient Safety

Objectives: We sought to make pathologistsa intraoperative consultation (IOC) results immediately available to the surgical team, other clinicians, and laboratory medicine colleagues to improve communication and decrease postanalytic errors. Methods: We created an IOC report in our stand-alone laboratory information system that could be signed out prior to, and independent of, the final report, and transfer immediately to the electronic health record (EHR) as a preliminary diagnosis. We evaluated two metrics: Preliminary (IOC) result review in the EHR by clinicians and postanalytic errors. Results: We assessed 2,886 IOC orders from the first 22 months after implementation. Clinicians reviewed 1,956 (68%) of the IOC results while in preliminary status, including 1,399 (48%) within the first 24 hours. We evaluated 150 cases preimplementation and 300 cases postimplementation for discrepancies between the pathologista s IOC result and the IOC result recorded by the surgeon in the operative note. Discrepancies dropped from 12 of 150 preimplementation to 6 of 150 and 7 of 150 in postimplementation years 1 and 2. One of the 25 discrepancies had a major clinical impact. Conclusions: Real-time reporting of IOC results to the EHR reliably transmits results immediately to clinical teams. This strategy reduces but does not eliminate postanalytic interpretive errors by clinical teams.