C-Suite Priorities Should Include Decision Support

In recent white paper released about a year ago, the number one most important event for the C-Suite to concern themselves with was the implementation of a functioning EMR or EHR. I took the paragraph below from this white paper as I wanted to point out that a major part of the EHR implementation within the hospital is the use of clinical decision support systems that are evidence based.

"Hospital chief information officers and administrators must figure out which of the myriad IT projects they need to accomplish to prepare for EMR implementation or to continue along the adoption path if they’ve already begun. Doctors and hospitals not going electronic by 2015 will be subject to penalties, according to the terms of the federal stimulus package. Planning for EMR implementation might include projects such as establishing a fully closed-loop medication administration record, implementing a system-wide clinical data repository, and using clinical decision support systems that are based on evidence-based medicine, to name just a few. Planning for staff buy-in and training to use such systems is also critical to implementation. The pressure is on to move toward EMRs with the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services policy to not reimburse for their designated and expanding list of “never events” and with the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s designations of Patient Safety Organizations. Every hospital and healthcare facility’s ability and requirements to manage vast amounts of information is only increasing."

The numbers of actual implementations at this time were low and I would like to see if there has been any progress in this area.

These stats are also from this white paper: A recent survey of American Hospital Association CEO members (63% survey response rate) assessed implementation of EMRs (New Engl J Med online publication March 25, 2009) reported that “less than 2% of acute care hospitals have a comprehensive electronic-records system, and that, depending on the definition used, between 8 and 12% of hospitals have a basic electronic-records system. With the use of the definition that requires the presence of functionalities for physicians’ notes and nursing assessments, information systems in more than 90% of U.S. hospitals do not even meet the requirement for a basic electronic-records system.”

Lexi-Data is an evidence based Clinical Decision Support solutions that hospitals can implement in a rather short period of time. That is if there are hospitals that are to that point in the EHR implementation.