Clinical Decision Support Is a Key Functionality
Clinical decision support is a key functionality of health information technology that, when effectively applied, contributes to increased quality of care and enhanced health outcomes, error and adverse event avoidance, improved efficiency, reduced costs, and enhanced provider and patient satisfaction. Recognizing this potential to improve care, the US Congress included CDS as a centerpiece of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs (“Meaningful Use”).
Clinical decision support is not simply an alert, notification, or explicit care suggestion. It encompasses a variety of tools including, but not limited to, computerized alerts and reminders for providers and patients, clinical guidelines, condition-specific order sets, focused patient data reports and summaries, documentation templates, diagnostic support, and contextually relevant reference information. These functionalities may be deployed on a variety of platforms (eg, mobile, cloud-based, installed). Clinical decision support is not intended to replace clinician judgment, but rather is a tool to assist care team members in making timely, informed, higher-quality decisions. The “Five Rights” concept provides a best-practice framework that providers may consider in choosing the CDS options appropriate for their practice.
The Five Rights concept states that in order to provide these benefits, CDS interventions must provide
- the right information (evidence-based guidance, response to clinical need),
- to the right people (entire care team, including the patient),
- through the right channels (eg, EHR, mobile device, patient portal),
- in the right intervention formats (eg, order sets, flow sheets, dashboards, patient lists),
- at the right points in workflow (for decision making or action).
Read the rest of the article at Advances in Skin & Wound Care.
An excerpt from an article originally published in Advances in Skin & Wound Care, written by Cathy Thomas Hess, BSN, RN, CWOCN, VP and Chief Clinical Officer at Net Health.