April 24, 2014 — SCL Health System, a faith-based, nonprofit healthcare organization, announced an agreement to implement Stanson Health's next-generation clinical decision support (CDS) system. Stanson's CDS solutions are designed to safely reduce the cost and potential for harm from unnecessary care, by providing easy-to-use, real-time alerts and analytics to help guide physicians' decisions.
Stanson Health provides previously tested and validated CDS alerts, which reduce the potential for "false-positive" alerts that can cause alert fatigue. The alerts are designed to reduce unnecessary care for populations of patients, including care in physician offices, emergency departments and hospitals. The CDS recommendations are based on guidelines that are widely accepted by physicians and other healthcare providers, such as Choosing Wisely recommendations from the American Board of Internal Medicine. The analytics solution provides comparative information on physician acceptance of CDS recommendations and also utilization data that inform discussions about high quality and cost-effective care. For example, a physician can compare how often he or she accepts and rejects Choosing Wisely guidelines related to performing MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) with non-specific lower back pain with other physicians. This information can be very useful as physician organizations prepare for payment reform.
Scott Weingarten, M.D., chairman of the board of Stanson Health, said, "With the recent changes in the healthcare and the emergence of population health, new forms of CDS are needed. The CDS should be integrated into the workflow, personalized for each patient, and proven to reduce costs and improve quality. Moreover, care is more likely to improve if there is both CDS and comparative analytics for physicians to understand how they compare with their colleagues in their acceptance of CDS recommendations."
Evidence-based, physician-designed logic drives Stanson alerts, ensuring that an alert will only fire when the patient meets a specific profile and will offer recommendations relevant to the physician's decision. Physicians do not need to alter their workflow to access pertinent recommendations because the system ensures that the alert will deploy only when appropriate.
"Having evidence-based CDS integrated into the electronic health record (EHR) helps promote high value care and eliminate unnecessary and often costly tests and procedures by alerting physicians at the time and place decisions are made" said Jennie Dulac, RN, MS, SCL Health System vice president, clinical quality improvement. "Our industry is changing from a billing-by-volume system to one that rewards high-quality care. To adapt in this transforming environment, we engage with our physicians as leaders in this changing delivery system. By positioning our physicians as ‘co-dependent equals,’ it allows us to ensure that those on the front lines of care delivery stay connected and assist in the transition to accountable care."
For more information: www.stansonhealth.com