A randomized, controlled trial evaluating the impact of a computerized rounding and sign-out system on continuity of care and resident work hours.

With growing pressure to develop methods for efficient communication, patient data collection, and resident sign-out, this study evaluated the implementation of an innovative web-based program. The computerized system securely organized important sign-out information, automatically downloaded daily patient data, and printed the data to designed templates. For the medical and surgical teams using the intervention, significantly more time was spent seeing patients rather than collecting data, improvements were reported in both sign-out and continuity of care, and nearly half the time was spent prerounding. The authors suggest that well-designed information technology systems can not only improve the quality of care but also address the importance of efficiency.