The University of Maryland Medical System created an automated, rule-based electronic health record framework that assigns the "first-call provider" responsible for each inpatient throughout their hospital stay.

"This is regardless of how often a patient changes location, level of care or primary service," explained Tiffany Kuebler, PA-C.

Automated EHR assignments

Kuebler is a physician assistant and co-medical director of clinical informatics at the University of Maryland Medical Center and director of the Physician Builder Program at the University of Maryland Medical System. She will discuss the framework at a session titled "Automated EHR Assignments Reduce Safety Events, Save Clinician Time" at the 2026 HIMSS Global Health Conference & Exposition in March.

She will present the session with her colleagues Dr. Casey Bor and Sarah Elwell at the University of Maryland Medical System.

"In today’s inpatient environments, patients routinely transition across teams and units, yet many organizations still rely on static call schedules or manual sign-in/sign-out processes to answer a fundamental question: Who is responsible for this patient right now?" she noted.

"This topic is especially timely for HIMSS26 attendees as health systems continue to contend with high clinician burnout, limited time at the bedside, and growing dependence on secure messaging for time-sensitive clinical communication," she continued.

The problem is clear

When responsibility is unclear, messages are delayed, misrouted or sent to off-duty providers – contributing to care delays, safety events and clinician time waste.

"By eliminating manual sign-out and tightly integrating the EHR with enterprise scheduling and secure communication platforms, we created a scalable and reliable approach that ensures the right message reaches the right provider every time – reducing safety events, saving millions of dollars in clinician time and restoring clinician trust in communication workflows," Kuebler explained.

"In the session, we’ll illustrate the technology through a common inpatient scenario: A patient admitted through the emergency department for urgent surgery who subsequently transitions through the ICU, a surgical floor, and later to a medicine service before discharge," she added.

Over the course of a single hospitalization, responsibility for that patient changes multiple times, often across different clinical teams with distinct coverage models. Historically, ensuring the correct provider was identified required clinicians to manually update charts each shift or staff to search call schedules and notes when urgent communication was needed.

The correct responsible provider

"Our system removes that burden entirely," she said. "Using rule-based logic tied to patient movement and service ownership, the electronic health record automatically displays the correct responsible provider in real time, in a highly visible location in the chart. That information is directly linked to the organization’s secure messaging platform, enabling one-click communication without referencing external schedules.

"Whether it’s a critical lab value overnight or a consultant needing to relay urgent recommendations, the system always reflects the current on-call provider and updates instantly when responsibility changes – allowing care teams to communicate faster and with confidence," she added.

One key takeaway from the session for HIMSS26 attendees will be the critical role of clinician-led design in high-impact clinical workflow improvements, she said.

"When clinicians and clinician informaticists are meaningfully involved in identifying problems, mapping workflows and governing technologies, organizations can move beyond surface-level optimization to create systems that reflect how care is actually delivered," Kuebler explained. "This ensures technology decisions are driven by clinical reality, validated by end users."

Reliable, scalable and trusted

"Operationally, our work shows what this leadership model makes possible," she continued. "Clinician-led governance enables health systems to use existing EHR, scheduling and secure communication platforms to automate responsibility attribution in a way that is reliable, scalable and trusted by frontline teams."

With clear ownership and strong informatics/operations partnerships, organizations can deploy rule-based automation across hospitals, specialties and coverage models, delivering measurable gains in safety, efficiency and clinician satisfaction, she concluded.

Tiffany Kuebler’s session, "Automated EHR Assignments Reduce Safety Events, Save Clinician Time," is scheduled for Wednesday, March 11, from 9:45-10:45 a.m., in Murano 3204/Level 3 at HIMSS26 in Las Vegas.

*Follow Bill’s health IT coverage on LinkedIn: *Bill Siwicki *Email him: *[email protected] Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

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