RWJBarnabas Health’s AI-enabled early warning system was tied to an 18% reduction in the risk-adjusted odds of in-hospital death among high-risk patients, as mortality fell from 23.1% to 18.6% across the health system’s 11 hospitals.
According to a July 29 news release, researchers from RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School evaluated 23,132 high-risk patients treated at the West Orange, N.J.-based health system.
The tool, the Epic Deterioration Index, analyzes vital signs, lab results, nursing assessments and age already captured in the electronic health record. The system recalculates risk scores every 15 minutes and automatically alerts rapid response teams when patients hit the highest-risk threshold.
RWJBarnabas Health first piloted the tool at its academic medical center, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, before expanding it to its other 10 hospitals. Rapid response team activations for high-risk patients rose from 25.3% to 37.5% of hospital stays following the rollout, while ICU transfers did not significantly increase.
Because the Epic Deterioration Index is already built into one of the nation’s most widely used EHR systems, the findings could carry implications for hospitals nationwide.
The study was published in NEJM AI on July 22.
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