ArticleApplied clinical informatics2018
A Heuristic Evaluation to Assess Use of After Visit Summaries for Supporting Continuity of Care.
Article in Applied clinical informatics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Readability of AI-Generated Patient Visit Summaries in Orthopedic Surgery: Retrospective Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Evaluating the Safety and Usability of an Over-the-Counter Medical Device for Adults With Mild to Moderate Hearing Loss: Formative and Summative Usability Testing.JMIR human factors · 2025Article
- Usability Evaluation Methods Used in Electronic Discharge Summaries: Literature Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Review
- Evaluating the Usability of an Emergency Department After Visit Summary: Staged Heuristic Evaluation.JMIR human factors · 2023Article
- Usability of Electronic Health Record-Generated Discharge Summaries: Heuristic Evaluation.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
- Clinical decision support for intervention reduction in neonatal patients: A usability assessment.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOutpatient providers often do not receive discharge summaries from acute care providers prior to follow-up visits. These outpatient providers may use the after-visit summaries (AVS) that are given to patients to obtain clinical information. It is unclear how effectively AVS support care coordination between clinicians.
objectivesGoals for this effort include: (1) developing usability heuristics that may be applied both for assessment and to guide generation of medical documents in general, (2) conducting a heuristic evaluation to assess the use of AVS for communication between clinicians, and (3) providing recommendations for generating AVS that effectively support both patient/caregiver use and care coordination.
methodsWe created a 17-item heuristic evaluation instrument for assessing usability of medical documents. Eight experts used the instrument to assess each of four simulated AVS. The simulations were created using examples from two hospitals and two pediatric patient cases developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
resultsExperts identified 224 unique usability problems ranging in severity from mild to catastrophic. Content issues (e.g., missing medical history, marital status of a 2-year-old) were rated as most severe, but widespread formatting and structural problems (e.g., inconsistent indentation, fonts, and headings; confusing ordering of information) were so distracting that they significantly reduced readers' ability to efficiently use the documents. Overall, issues in the AVS from Hospital 2 were more severe than those in the AVS from Hospital 1.
conclusionThe new instrument allowed for quick, inexpensive evaluations of AVS. Usability issues such as unnecessary information, poor organization, missing information, and inconsistent formatting make it hard for patients, caregivers, and clinicians to use the AVS. The heuristics in the new instrument may be used as guidance to adapt electronic health record systems so that they generate more useful and usable medical documents.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.