Falck L, Zoller M, Rosemann T, Martínez-González NA, Chmiel C. Toward Standardized Monitoring of Patients With Chronic Diseases in Primary Care Using Electronic Medical Records: Systematic Review.
JMIR Med Inform 2019;
7:e10879. [PMID:
31127717 PMCID:
PMC6555125 DOI:
10.2196/10879]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/06/2018] [Revised: 03/20/2019] [Accepted: 04/07/2019] [Indexed: 12/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Background
Long-term care for patients with chronic diseases poses a huge challenge in primary care. In particular, there is a deficit regarding monitoring and structured follow-up. Appropriate electronic medical records (EMRs) could help improving this but, so far, there are no evidence-based specifications concerning the indicators that should be monitored at regular intervals.
Objective
The aim was to identify and collect a set of evidence-based indicators that could be used for monitoring chronic conditions at regular intervals in primary care using EMRs.
Methods
We searched MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Elsevier), the Cochrane Library (Wiley), the reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews, and the content of clinical guidelines. We included primary studies and guidelines reporting about indicators that allow for the assessment of care and help monitor the status and process of disease for five chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, asthma, arterial hypertension, chronic heart failure, and osteoarthritis.
Results
The use of the term “monitoring” in terms of disease management and long-term care for patients with chronic diseases is not widely used in the literature. Nevertheless, we identified a substantial number of disease-specific indicators that can be used for routine monitoring of chronic diseases in primary care by means of EMRs.
Conclusions
To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review summarizing the existing scientific evidence on the standardized long-term monitoring of chronic diseases using EMRs. In a second step, our extensive set of indicators will serve as a generic template for evaluating their usability by means of an adapted Delphi procedure. In a third step, the indicators will be summarized into a user-friendly EMR layout.
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