Utilizing the Electronic Medical Record to Enhance Health Care Provider Delivery of Messages About the Safe Storage of Firearms

The goal of this project was to determine whether screening youth and parents for firearm presence and imbedding those results in the electronic medical record (EMR) increased health care provider (HCP) documentation of firearms and subsequent delivery of a safe storage message. The study took place in a large adolescent medicine practice. Fifty-six dyads (40% of eligible) were randomized to usual care or the intervention, in which screening results for firearms were imbedded in the EMR. Health care providers delivered a safe storage message to 20% of controls and 51.2% in the intervention (P = .04). When HCPs documented the delivery of a safe storage message, 64% of parents recalled hearing it, compared with only 36% when there was no documentation (P = .012). Therefore, we found that incorporating firearm screening into the EMR increases the attention HCPs give to delivering a firearm safe storage message and correlates with parents recalling having heard a safe storage message.