Impact of email reminders to increase provider utilization of clinical pathways.

616 Background: The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) Clinical Pathways decision-support tool helps to promote uniform care across the enterprise. To facilitate utilization of the DFCI Clinical Pathways tool, the DFCI Pathways team implemented personalized automated emails twice weekly to each provider. Our team assessed the effectiveness of personalized email reminders to increase provider usage of Pathways at our centers. Methods: Across DFCI, we have created and implemented a Clinical Pathways solution. Providers are asked to navigate the Pathway decision platform whenever they are writing a new treatment order. Data from each completed Pathways navigation are loaded into DFCI’s Enterprise Data Management Platform (EDMP). New EMR treatment orders are also captured and stored in the EDMP. We created an algorithm that identifies new orders that do not have a corresponding Pathways navigation and then triggers a personalized reminder to the ordering provider. The Pathways team has continuously made improvements to reminder emails to drive higher utilization of our Pathways platform. For example, each automated, semi-weekly email now includes clickable links which auto-generate replies to the Pathways team when an order does not require navigation. Results: DFCI went live with a new Pathways platform in July 2019. Following an initial period of platform stabilization, we began sending email reminders to providers in 2020. Since 2020, the Pathways usage rate has continued to increase, demonstrating a consistent rise in utilization since the introduction of provider reminders. Conclusions: We have been able to achieve a 92% usage rate in the absence of a digital hard stop. While physicians are eligible for a usage-driven Pathways bonus each year, the bonus amount has been constant since the program’s inception. Physicians have consistently remarked that the use of email reminders have played a role in increasing provider utilization, while reducing administrative burden. Automated personalized workflows, such as email reminders, are an effective method to encourage providers to interact with a clinical decision-support tool and can be used to promote standards of care across an enterprise. Usage rate per academic year. Academic Year Usage Rate (%) 2020 63.11 2021 71.08 2022 82.05 2023 85.68 2024 89.89 2025* 92.05 *Usage rate as of 05/06/2025.