From the May 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Going this route enables you to build on the hard work your organization has already put into the content system — just like basketball fans supplementing their knowledge base with the latest injury reports — ensuring you’re providing your patients with the best care possible, all while delivering the best financial outcomes for everyone.
Creating teamwork
Once potential areas of change have been discovered and recommendations made, it is critical to seek the input of the people who will ultimately be responsible for its use — your physicians. It’s rare that any physician, especially those with years of experience, likes being “told” how he or she must practice medicine, so gaining input and consensus is critical. Although evidence-based standardization of treatment is typically a good thing, it tends to work better when all the physicians have a say in developing those standards.
Establishing an asynchronous communications system can help expedite this process. This type of system will alert physicians via email that a change has been proposed, and provide a link to an entry showing what is being recommended and why. Good systems will even highlight whether it’s a care/ quality-based change, regulatory change or the result of some other need. Once physicians follow the link, they should be able to easily review the evidence (which gives context to the decision), approve or disagree with the change and provide any comments, all within the same system.
If the decision is made to proceed, the organization can make the update, which appears in the EHR immediately. This process ensures physicians are working with the best evidence-based information while still leaving leeway for physicians to use their clinical judgment to make care decisions based on the individual patient’s characteristics. Ultimately, obtaining consensus and collaboration makes the lift to standardization much easier to achieve, which helps elevate quality while driving down the cost of care, which, of course, are two of the pillars required to transition to value-based care.
About the author: Steve Arendt, M.D., is a board-certified family physician and senior director clinical leadership at Zynx Health.Back to HCB News
