AMIA's Clinical Informatics Conference is where clinical informaticists of all disciplines–physicians, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, dentists, technicians, health IT developers, data analysts, C-suite executives, and more–share their innovations in bringing the technology advances out of the lab and into the front lines of care delivery.
This year's event included a panel discussion on the topic of electronic clinical decision support (CDS) and the challenges (and opportunities) to evaluating impact on downstream quality outcomes.
Panel Moderator, speaking on the role of CDS in a learning health system, was Naveen Muthu, M.D., Director of the Health Informatics Core Innovation Unit at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Muthu brings lessons learned by aligning research and quality improvement decision support with system priorities. He discussed how improvement of outcomes can be supported with science and technology.
Phrase Health’s own founder and CEO, Marc Tobias, M.D., discussed evaluating CDS in the context of quality improvement. Dr. Tobias explored with the group how EHR data that’s already being collected can be used by health systems to evaluate CDS performance and determine whether quality efforts are working or need to be implemented in the first place. He also described key challenges with EHR data accessibility and why clinical informaticists should play a bigger role in QI efforts.
Shannon Sims, M.D. Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Data Operations at Vizient Inc. Dr. Sims discussed the connection between CDS functionality and clinical outcomes in areas of quality and cost, providing an overview of Vizient’s risk adjusted outcomes metrics and other tools that are used by over 1,000 hospitals across the United States.
Paul Rosenau, M.D. M.S., a clinical informaticist at the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN) and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the UVM Larner College of Medicine, provided an operational perspective on treating CDS as a quality improvement technique. Dr. Rosenau contrasted differences in project selection and goals, stakeholder representation, design methods and change management practices that tend to vary by whether CDS is treated primarily as an information technology or quality improvement tool. He brought wisdom, too, about the role clinical informaticists play in bridging methodological and organizational governance with respect to the design and measurement of CDS efficacy.
Lastly, Anibal Perez RN, MS-HSM, Principal of Data Operations at Vizient, highlighted quality outcomes data to identify appropriate CDS opportunities. Mr. Perez described the various approaches to identifying opportunities in the quality outcomes and CDS data that align with an organization's priorities and explained how to create a timeline that aligns with the shared goals of the teams.
Overall, attendees came away from the event better able to define the methods available for reducing the complexity of defining quality measures, more able to identify which quality opportunities can be addressed by changes to clinical decisions support, and more capable of implementing CDS that can improve quality outcomes, design a plan to identify opportunities to optimize CDS tools, and create improvement goals that can be shared by QI and IT teams.
Interested in learning more about ways EHR data and clinical decision support tools can be used to inform development of and measure progress against quality improvement projects to improve efficacy and outcomes in your health system? Visit https://www.phrasehealth.com/.