Analyzing point of care tools through faculty, resident, and stakeholder buy-in: a cautionary tale
Description
Purpose: Costs for Preston Medical Library’s primary point-of-care (POC) clinical tool have increased to half of the acquisitions budget, while user affiliation data have not been provided to facilitate cost sharing. In response, user preferences for POC tools were analyzed to determine a viable, less expensive alternative to the current subscription.
Setting/Participants/Resources: Faculty and residents at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine (GSM), and other clinical staff at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (UTMC), a 685-bed teaching hospital.
Methodology: At the direction of school leadership, a working group of library staff, resident physicians, and medical faculty members was appointed, and data were gathered through individual user surveys of clinical support tools. Three POC tool options were considered. Select clinicians evaluated the tools using a series of questions individually chosen as typical to their disciplines. Additionally, feedback was sought from other AAHSL institutions regarding subscriptions to the tool in question and funding schemes. At the same time, the Dean communicated to the medical campus community that cost increases for the product had become prohibitive, requiring consideration of alternatives.
Results/Outcomes: Survey responses revealed a strong preference for the incumbent tool, rating PubMed as the second preferred source, but not substitutable. Working group members preferred the current product at POC, judging one of the candidate tools as “adequate” but less user friendly and more time consuming to access. Hospital leadership also received responses from clinical staff. As a result, a cost sharing agreement with the school was forged.
Discussion/Conclusion: A deliberative approach to assessing POC clinical tools was used, resulting in continued access to the preferred product. Enhanced data gathering on a go-forward basis will help to ascertain use patterns by academic and hospital users. The library and the other stakeholders will monitor development of alternative POC tools and costs for future decision making.
Analyzing point of care tools through faculty, resident, and stakeholder buy-in: a cautionary tale
Purpose: Costs for Preston Medical Library’s primary point-of-care (POC) clinical tool have increased to half of the acquisitions budget, while user affiliation data have not been provided to facilitate cost sharing. In response, user preferences for POC tools were analyzed to determine a viable, less expensive alternative to the current subscription.
Setting/Participants/Resources: Faculty and residents at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine (GSM), and other clinical staff at the University of Tennessee Medical Center (UTMC), a 685-bed teaching hospital.
Methodology: At the direction of school leadership, a working group of library staff, resident physicians, and medical faculty members was appointed, and data were gathered through individual user surveys of clinical support tools. Three POC tool options were considered. Select clinicians evaluated the tools using a series of questions individually chosen as typical to their disciplines. Additionally, feedback was sought from other AAHSL institutions regarding subscriptions to the tool in question and funding schemes. At the same time, the Dean communicated to the medical campus community that cost increases for the product had become prohibitive, requiring consideration of alternatives.
Results/Outcomes: Survey responses revealed a strong preference for the incumbent tool, rating PubMed as the second preferred source, but not substitutable. Working group members preferred the current product at POC, judging one of the candidate tools as “adequate” but less user friendly and more time consuming to access. Hospital leadership also received responses from clinical staff. As a result, a cost sharing agreement with the school was forged.
Discussion/Conclusion: A deliberative approach to assessing POC clinical tools was used, resulting in continued access to the preferred product. Enhanced data gathering on a go-forward basis will help to ascertain use patterns by academic and hospital users. The library and the other stakeholders will monitor development of alternative POC tools and costs for future decision making.