LAUSR

In teaching hospitals, patients receive direct care from a succession of different physicians, each of whom may order diagnostic tests on the same patient resulting in multiple physicians unknowingly ordering the same test in the same time period, leading to overutilization. We examined the association of test-ordering by multiple physicians with duplication of two tests, Beta D-Glucan (BDG) and CMV Viral Load by PCR non blood, as aid for detection of fungal and cytomegaloviral infections, respectively Retrospective medical records at Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas were examined in between 10/1/2019- 10/30/2019. A total 167 test orders were identified for CMV Viral Load non blood and BDG presence in blood. Each medical record was assessed for frequency of ordering along with the physicians who ordered them A total 167 tests were ordered in which, 120 times BDG was ordered and 52 times CMV was ordered. Singleton orders were noted in 85(50%) instances of BDG & 30(17%) for CMV.Multiple test orders were 44 (25%) for BDG and 8 (4%) for CMV respectively. Both CMV and BDG were ordered together 57 times. The time stamps of multiple test orders in individual patients was assessed for instances of orders that were less than 3 days apart and analysis showed out of the 44 multiple test orders, 34% (15) test orders were ordered less than 3 days apart and 66%(29) tests were ordered more than 3 days apart for BDG. Upon chart review, most of these quickly successive orders were by different physicians. The estimated costs of the duplicate orders are 4334.0$ & 1104.16$ for BDG and CMV respectively. CMV and BDG are commonly ordered on many patients. Analysis shows that many times, physicians order testing when the same test has been ordered very recently by a separate physician. Note that for both tests, retesting in less than three days is not normally indicated, however this happens often, especially for BDG. This is most likely due to difficulty in determining within the EHR what tests are drawn and “pending’ but not yet finalized and reported. With usage of prompts/ alerts in EMR that warn of existing “pending’ orders by another caregiver, the frequency of duplicate test ordering for the same patient may be reduced, in turn reducing the costs of healthcare.