Standard admission order sets promote ordering of unnecessary investigations: a quasi-randomised evaluation in a simulated setting

Introduction

Standard admission order sets have become ubiquitous across hospitals to promote adherence to practice guidelines and increase ordering efficiency.1 2 This standardisation arose in part out of a need to minimise waste in healthcare, a phenomenon identified as a major barrier to reducing future healthcare costs.3 However, few studies have systematically evaluated whether these standardised orders can actually promote overordering of investigations. At our academic hospital's coronary care unit (CCU), a single mandatory generic order set is used regardless of admitting diagnosis and includes optional check boxes for serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and brain natriuretic peptide (BNP). We postulated that physicians order investigations differently on admission based on which investigations are included in the admission order set.

Methods

We quasi-randomised a convenience sample of participants in a double-blind fashion to receive either our standard CCU admission order set or...

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