Issues

 

• Diagnosis of wheeze in preschool children was erroneously being diagnosed and treated as asthma

• Erroneous diagnosis was leading to expensive, complicated and unnecessary treatment with adverse health risks to the patient

 

Solution

 

Upon presentation at the Emergency Department (ED), patients who had symptoms of either wheezing or asthma were recorded in the ED triage system.

 

The ED system would automatically trigger an electronic asthma action (AAP) plan, thus deviating the treating clinician from what may have been a standard treatment protocol into a specific asthma diagnosis workflow.

 

The automated process had a decision tree built into the application. Thus the application was a smart tool offering the clinician a diagnostic pathway depending upon the data entered into the tool.

 

Asthma education materials for the patient were also part of the smart package.

 

Outcome

 

• Less children were incorrectly diagnosed with asthma

• Those children who were diagnosed properly with asthma had a greater instance of leaving the hospital with on ongoing Asthma Action Plan (AAP)