Alternatives are forms of interruptive clinical decision support that are designed to suggest a different course of action when specific orders (medications or procedures) are placed by clinicians. They are commonly employed in medication shortages to redirect clinicians to other clinically appropriate substitutes. Due to their ease of implementation, ability to disallow continuation of the original order, and behavior during medication reconciliation, alternatives are often used preferentially over similar tools such as OurPractice Advisories (OPAs). The unique features of alternatives made them suitable candidates to guide clinicians through evaluation and modification of ordering preferences during the recent blood culture bottle and fluid shortages. The critical nature of these shortage events required ECU Health to rapidly develop the ability to characterize and interpret the influence of these tools on ordering behavior. Through the process of developing the necessary analytics for these two different shortage scenarios it became clear that clinicians often encounter the same alternative in rapid succession before making a final decision on which order to place, if any. This realization led to the idea of grouping alternatives according to episodes and analyzing them as a collection instead of as individual trigger events. This presentation will provide a brief review of the core features of configuring alternatives, existing tools for analysis and their limitations, and use of an alternative episode to improve upon what currently exists.