Clinical decision support systems used alongside EHRs can contribute significant improvements in treatment outcomes, but many physicians report dissatisfaction with the technology because of the overabundance of alerts.

In order to address this situation, U.S. Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, recently sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking it to commission the Institute of Medicine to develop a set of standards for CDSs, according to Cardiovascular Business.

Markey described the situation as being central to patient safety. Health IT tools like CDSs and EHRs can lead to great improvements in patient safety, but not if doctors are not using them.

"The guidelines should be three-fold and address ways that device manufacturers can minimize the number of unnecessary alarms and false positives, the steps that hospitals can take to ensure that providers are well-trained to minimize the alarm fatigue and measures the FDA can take to improve its adverse event reporting system," Markey said in the letter, according to the news source.

HIMSS has characterized altert fatigue as being one of the primary barriers remaining between physicians and higher rates of CDS and computerized physician order entry adoption.