
The Ebola situation in Dallas—with one patient death, two nurse exposures, dozens under quarantine, and talk last week of declaring a state of emergency in the city—has thrown into stark relief the gaps between public health and frontline clinical care. But those gaps also present opportunities to make public health data work harder and to change how doctors approach clinical care in times when events and information are changing at Internet speed.
That’s the gist of an editorial by Boston Children’s Hospital’s Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
It comes down to making electronic health records (EHRs) work more flexibly, in ways that help promote situational awareness among clinicians during times of crisis and flag instances when a patient’s condition may require more attention than usual. …