Discrepancies between Retrospective Review of “Real-Time” Electronic Health Record Documentation and Prospective Observer Documentation of In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Quality Metrics in an Academic Cardiac Intensive Care Unit

Background: Every year, approximately 200,000 patients will experience in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) in the United States. Survival has been shown to be greatest with the prompt initiation of CPR and early interventions, leading to the development of time-based quality measures. It is uncertain how documentation practices affect reports of compliance with time-based quality measures in IHCA. Methods: A retrospective review of all cases of IHCA that occurred in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) at an academic quaternary hospital was conducted. For each case, a member of the code team (observer) documented performance measures as part of a prospective cardiac arrest quality improvement database. We compared those data to those abstracted in the retrospective review of “real-time” documentation in a Resuscitation Narrator module within electronic health records (EHRs) to investigate for discrepancies. Results: We identified 52 cases of IHCA, all of which were witnessed events. In total, 47 (90%) cases were reviewed by observers as receiving epinephrine within 5 min, but only 42 (81%) were documented as such in the EHR review (p = 0.04), meaning that the interrater agreement for this metric was low (Kappa = 0.27, 95% CI 0.16–0.36). Four (27%) eligible patients were reported as having defibrillation within 2 min by observers, compared to five (33%) reported by the EHR review (p = 0.90), and with substantial agreement (Kappa = 0.73, 95% CI 0.66–0.79). There was almost perfect agreement (Kappa = 0.82, 95% CI 0.76–0.88) for the initial rhythm of cardiac arrest (25% shockable rhythm by observers vs. 29% for EHR review, p = 0.31). Conclusion: There was a discrepancy between prospective observers’ documentation of meeting quality standards and that of the retrospective review of “real-time” EHR documentation. A further study is required to understand the cause of discrepancy and its consequences.