Standardizing Emergency Work-ups Around Risk Data

Chest pain is the second leading reason for emergency department (ED) visits in the United States. Resource utilization for this ED subpopulation is particularly high, in part due to a dearth of accepted standardized clinical approaches and general overestimation of risk on the part of both providers and patients. This prospective observational cohort study seeks to address this issue by providing externally validated risk scores for major adverse cardiac events using a web-based clinical decision support platform (RISTRA) embedded within the electronic health record at 13 Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) EDs over a 12-month period. The decision support will provide risk estimates specific to the KPNC patient population. This studies hypothesis is that the provision of more accurate risk estimation for major adverse cardiac events will improve informed decision making by both providers and patients, resulting in less provocative testing and lower ED lengths of stay amongst low risk patients, as well as improving medical management among non-low risk patients and decreasing future rates of major adverse cardiac events.