Published in:
28-02-2023 | Original Research
Assessing the Assessment—Developing and Deploying a Novel Tool for Evaluating Clinical Notes’ Diagnostic Assessment Quality
Published in: Journal of General Internal Medicine | Issue 9/2023
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Background
Ambulatory diagnostic errors are increasingly being recognized as an important quality and safety issue, and while measures of diagnostic quality have been sought, tools to evaluate diagnostic assessments in the medical record are lacking.
Objective
To develop and test a tool to measure diagnostic assessment note quality in primary care urgent encounters and identify common elements and areas for improvement in diagnostic assessment.
Design
Retrospective chart review of urgent care encounters at an urban academic setting.
Participants
Primary care physicians.
Main Measures
The Assessing the Assessment (ATA) instrument was evaluated for inter-rater reliability, internal consistency, and findings from its application to EHR notes.
Key Results
ATA had reasonable performance characteristics (kappa 0.63, overall Cronbach’s alpha 0.76). Variability in diagnostic assessment was seen in several domains. Two components of situational awareness tended to be well-documented (“Don’t miss diagnoses” present in 84% of charts, red flag symptoms in 87%), while Psychosocial context was present only 18% of the time.
Conclusions
The ATA tool is a promising framework for assessing and identifying areas for improvement in diagnostic assessments documented in clinical encounters.