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SummaryEliciting knowledge from geographically dispersed experts given their time and scheduling constraints, while maintaining anonymity among them, presents multiple challenges.Describe an innovative, Internet based method to acquire knowledge from experts regarding patients who need post-acute referrals. Compare, 1) the percentage of patients referred by experts to percentage of patients actually referred by hospital clinicians, 2) experts’ referral decisions by disciplines and geographic regions, and 3) most common factors deemed important by discipline.De-identified case studies, developed from electronic health records (EHR), contained a comprehensive description of 1,496 acute care inpatients. In teams of three, physicians, nurses, social workers, and physical therapists reviewed case studies and assessed the need for post-acute care referrals; Delphi rounds followed when team members did not agree. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) compared experts’ decisions by discipline, region of the country and to the decisions made by study hospital clinicians, adjusting for the repeated observations from each expert and case. Frequencies determined the most common case characteristics chosen as important by the experts.The experts recommended referral for 80% of the cases; the actual discharge disposition of the patients showed referrals for 67%. Experts from the Northeast and Midwest referred 5% more cases than experts from the West. Physicians and nurses referred patients at similar rates while both referred more often than social workers. Differences by discipline were seen in the factors identified as important to the decision.The method for eliciting expert knowledge enabled national dispersed expert clinicians to anonymously review case summaries and make decisions about post-acute care referrals. Having time and a comprehensive case summary may have assisted experts to identify more patients in need of post-acute care than the hospital clinicians. The methodology produced the data needed to develop an expert decision support system for discharge planning.Citation: Bowles KH, Ratcliffe S, Potashnik S, Topaz M, Holmes J, Shih N-W, Naylor MD. Using electronic case summaries to elicit multi-disciplinary expert knowledge about referrals to post-acute care.

SummaryHome health nurses and clients experience unmet information needs when transitioning from hospital to home health. Personal health records (PHRs) support consumer-centered information management activities. Previous work has assessed PHRs associated with healthcare providers, but these systems leave home health nurses unable to access necessary information.To evaluate the ability of publically available PHRs to accept, manage, and share information from a home health case study.Two researchers accessed the publically available PHRs on myPHR.com, and attempted to enter, manage, and share the case study data. We qualitatively described the PHR features, and identified gaps between the case study information and PHR functionality.Eighteen PHRs were identified in our initial search. Seven systems met our inclusion criteria, and are included in this review. The PHRs were able to accept basic medical information. Gaps occurred when entering, managing, and/or sharing data from the acute care and home health episodes. The PHRs that were reviewed were unable to effectively manage the case study information. Therefore, increasing consumer health literacy through these systems may be difficult. The PHRs that we reviewed were also unable to electronically share their data.The gap between the existing functionality and the information needs from the case study may make these PHRs difficult to use for home health environments. Additional work is needed to increase the functionality of the PHR systems to better fit the data needs of home health clients.