{"id":5916,"date":"2014-06-16T10:07:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T14:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.healthit.gov\/buzz-blog\/?p=5916"},"modified":"2025-07-14T18:32:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T18:32:49","slug":"screening-prompted-clinical-decision-support-saved-patients-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthit.gov\/blog\/insights-updates\/screening-prompted-clinical-decision-support-saved-patients-life\/","title":{"rendered":"How a screening prompted by clinical decision support saved a patient\u2019s life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Anti-aircraft artillery and abdominal aortic aneurysms have a couple of things in common. First, they are both known as &#8216;Triple A&#8217; (AAA). Second, they both blow up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Killing time before the recent eHealth Summit at CMS in Baltimore, Larry Garber, an internist at Worcester, Massachusetts-based Reliant Medical Group, who was speaking at the event, mentioned the abbreviation (referencing the aneurysm, not the Ack\/Ack guns).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Garber, an ONC <a href=\"https:\/\/healthit.gov\/health-it-basics\/health-it-fellows-leaders-health-it\">Health IT Fellow<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/healthit.gov\/\/profiles\/ehr-experience\">early adopter of EHRs<\/a>, tells the Buzz blog how a simple decision support prompt likely saved the life of one of Reliant\u2019s patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A notification on the screen of Reliant\u2019s patient portal alerted a 65-year-old Medicare patient that he was due for the AAA screening. Garber said that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org\/uspstf\/uspsaneu.htm\">the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends<\/a> that when men who smoked in the past turn 65, they should be screened for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm. &#8220;He contacted us because he saw the reminder which was triggered by his prior smoking history in our EHR,&#8221; said Garber.&nbsp; A screening ultrasound was scheduled and the man came in for the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We found an aneurysm this big,&#8221; Garber said, making a spheroid shape with his hands the size of a Florida grapefruit. If the aneurysm had ruptured, Garber said, it more than likely would have killed the patient.&nbsp; The patient was promptly admitted to the hospital and had the aneurysm repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Garber agreed that although there are certainly challenges with the implementation of &nbsp;health IT usability, the benefits to patients outweigh them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><i>Have a similar anecdote about how health IT saved a life, reduced redundancies or improved the health of one of your patients? Leave a comment below or contact me at <a title=\"Email contact Brett Coughlin\" href=\"mailto:brett.coughlin@hhs.gov\">brett.coughlin@hhs.gov<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anti-aircraft artillery and abdominal aortic aneurysms have a couple of things in common. First, they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_selected_menu":"","_show_breadcrumbs":"true","_blog_show_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"archived-category":[685],"featured":[],"topics":[408,454,415,417],"class_list":["post-5916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","archived-category-ehr-case-studies","topics-care-continuum","topics-case-studies","topics-clinical-quality-safety","topics-usability-provider-burden"],"acf":{"blog_authors":[{"blog_author_profiles":"198506"}],"hp_news_hide":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.8.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>clinical decision support prompt saved the life of Reliant\u2019s patients<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Garber, 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