Implementing a Cutting Edge Ethics Consult Data System

Translating an aggregate of daily consult work into valid, useful insights that can drive a better understanding of one’s practice environment, laser-focus evidence-based quality improvement efforts, and facilitate high-powered research is of great value to an ethics consult service. But setting up a system that meaningfully communicates ethics consult data and simplify its analyses can be a daunting prospect. In this workshop, the presenters will share their ACECS-powered data model and data dashboard using their own 1,700-case database as an example. Presenters will demonstrate how to use a robust customizable data system and will leave with a sample coding system and an Excel-based data collection and modeling system that they can immediately put into practice to begin analyzing and sharing data. The process of creating meaningful data will be discussed: the benefits, barriers, and blunders along the way. The benefits of this system are many: participants can better understand their practice environment, better allocate resources, identify areas needing improvement, and communicate their service’s performance and value to other stakeholders. ACECS is the most widely used coding system available at this time and is in use by dozens of hospitals and health systems. As a result, participants can utilize their own data dashboard to create opportunities for benchmarking, collaboration, and data sharing. Finally, we will propose a vision of enable data-sharing on a large scale so the field can develop an epidemiology of ethics issues—essential to advance the profession and empirically ground practice standards.