The clinical decision support committee for EPIC is helping advance safe, effective patient care at the point of treatment. The clinician-led multidisciplinary group reviews all of the clinical decision support requests that are built into EPIC. The committee was formed to address the dozens of clinical decision support requests that come into the system, which need to be vetted and sent to the right person at the right time, said Ben Staley, Pharm.D., BCPS, a clinical specialist in quality improvement and clinical analytics for the department of pharmacy services at UF Health Shands Hospital.

“As part of our review, a key piece is measurability. How do we determine that an alert we put into the system is achieving its end result and how do we know that it does not contribute to adverse effects such as alert fatigue,” Staley said.

The committee is working to hone the alert system in EPIC to ensure the alerts that are being sent are pertinent.

“Alert fatigue is when providers or users of the system are bombarded with dozens of requests that come into the system that don’t have any meaning,” Staley said. “We review their necessity and appropriateness and then we ask that the requestors measure the effectiveness and bring it back to the committee.”