New software program notifies physicians of readmissions

Editor's Note

Murmur software helps bridge communication gaps by sending information from an electronic health record, to a hospital's scheduling software, to a physician's cell phone if a patient is readmitted within 5 days, according to Medscape’s coverage of a study presented May 4 at the Society of Hospital Medicine’s annual meeting in Las Vegas.

In a 2-week trial of the Murmur software program, which was developed at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, 18 attending hospitalists received notices that 14 patients were readmitted.

The program is designed to work with Epic inpatient electronic health records. For other systems, the software will have to be customized.

A new software program can notify hospitalists if a patient is readmitted, and can survey physicians in real time about issues such as workload.