Evaluation of clinician interaction with alerts to enhance performance of the tele-critical care medical environment

Objective Identify opportunities to improve the interaction between clinicians and Tele-Critical Care (Tele-CC) programs through an analysis of alert occurrence and reactivation in a specific Tele-CC application. Materials and Methods Data were collected automatically through the Philips eCaremanager® software system used at multiple hospitals in the Avera health system. We evaluated the distribution of alerts per patient, frequency of alert types, time between consecutive alerts, and Tele-CC clinician choice of alert reactivation times. Results Each patient generated an average of 79.8 alerts during their ICU stay (median 31.0; 25th – 75th percentile 10.0–89.0) with 46.4 for blood pressure and 38.4 for oxygenation. The most frequent alerts for continuous physiological parameters were: MAP limit (28.9 %), O2/RR (26.4 %), MAP trend (16.5 %), HR trend (12.1 %), and HR limit (11.3 %). The median time between consecutive alerts for one parameter was less than 10 min for 86 % of patients. Tele-CC providers responded to all alert types with immediate reactivation 47–88 % of the time. Limit alerts had longer reactivation times than their trend alert counterparts (p-value Conclusions The alert type specific differences in frequency, time occurrence and provider choice of reactivation time provide insight into how clinicians interact with the Tele-CC system. Systems engineering enhancements to Tele-CC software algorithms may reduce alert burden and thereby decrease clinicians’ cognitive workload for alert assessment. Further study of Tele-CC alert generation, alert presentation to clinicians, and the clinicians’ options to respond to these alerts may reduce provider workload, minimize alert desensitization, and optimize the ability of Tele-CC clinicians to provide efficient and timely critical care management.