Employing clinical decision support to attain our strategic goal: the safe care of the surgical patient

Clinical decision support can be employed to increase patient safety and improve workflow efficiencies for physicians and other healthcare providers. Physician input into the design and deployment of clinical decision support systems can increase the utility of the alerts and reduce the likelihood of "alert fatigue." The Hospital for Special Surgery is a 146-bed orthopedic facility that performs approximately 18,000 surgeries a year Efficient work processes are a necessity. The facility began implementing a new electronic health record system in June 2005 and plan to go live in summer 2007. This article reports on some of the clinical decision support rules and alerts being incorporated into the facility's system in the following categories--high-risk, high-frequency scenarios, rules that provide efficiencies and value from the presciber perspective, and rules that relate to patient safety.