Decision Support Study - A study on the impact of an evidence-based bedside electronic decision support tool on change in clinical performance in the care of Alberta hemodialysis patients

A bedside decision support tool that provides patient specific, evidence-based management recommendations to rounding nephrologists responsible for each patient's medical management. The decision support tool will consist of an electronic database containing clinical information on study subjects. A series of simple algorithms will incorporate these clinical data and the tool will generate patient-specific recommendations for clinical management every two weeks. The recommendations will be printed out on individual sheets of paper for each subject in the active treatment group and put on the clinical chart. The attending nephrologists will view the recommendations when they make their rounds. Clinical data will also be concurrently collected and stored for subjects in a control group, however no recommendations will be generated throughout the study. Study timeline - The electronic database will store data on both study groups an intial 6 month period but no recommendations will be generated, although rounding nephrologists will have access to the clinical data. For the following 18 months the electronically stored data will continue to be available to rounding nephrologists in both study groups, however, recommendations will be generated every two weeks for nephrologists treating the active group only.