The Responsible Physician Project makes it easy

When a patient is admitted to the MGH, he or she often is seen by more than one physician, each delivering different aspects of care. Therefore, caregivers may need to ask, "Who is the physician in charge of this patient?"

The Responsible Physician Project makes it easy to answer this question, helping providers identify the responding clinician at a moment's notice. Developed under the mandate of Brit Nicholson, MD, chief medical officer, and led by Cyrus Hopkins, MD, director of the Center for Quality and Safety, and Deborah Adair, director of Health Information Services, clinicians now have the ability to identify and update the responding clinician — the provider accountable for the immediate care of the patient — in the Partners Enterprise Patient List (PEPL). This information also can be viewed by using the "Care Tm" button in the Clinical Application Suite (CAS).

The PEPL application provides clinicians the ability to manage their list of patients. It also is used by responding clinicians to assign themselves to patients and sign over their list of patients to the new responding clinician when there is a change in coverage. Using CAS, all clinicians, including nurses, radiologists, physicians and other care team members, can identify the responding clinician. Additional functions include the ability to page, e-mail, edit information and print a report of care team members including photos.

"The system allows the care team to gain immediate knowledge of the attending physician, the primary care physician and the responding clinician," says Hopkins. "In Phase 2, the system will provide the identification of the responsible physician — the staff physician who is ultimately responsible for the patient at any point in time."

"We are receiving great feedback on the application from users," says Adair. "Before PEPL, a clinician may have had to make several calls to reach the patient's responding clinician. The Responsible Physician Project was designed to provide a centralized snapshot of this caregiver information. The Information Systems team has done a great job training staff, providing demonstrations and working with services to understand and adapt to variations. Jodi MacLeod not only does a terrific job in providing assistance and support to users, but she also listens to ideas and suggestions and brings them back to the team to incorporate into PEPL wherever possible."

Attending physicians are encouraged to check their patient lists daily to help the Information Systems (IS) team continue to improve and prepare for Phase 2 of the project. In this phase, planners will automate and update all physician schedules into the PEPL application.

For more information about the Responsible Physician Project, contact MacLeod, IS project manager, at (617) 643-2252.