If Only I Could Do It Over

Child drowns in backyard pool. Mother backs over child in driveway. Child launched from car during accident, paralyzed for life. News headlines like these cause us all to wince and think of the heartache and grief one must feel when they say, “I wish I had it to do over. I would have…bought a pool alarm…bought a rear view camera for the car…buckled my child in a seatbelt.” Many accidents can be prevented if we use the tools available to us. The same goes for healthcare. Clinical alerting, proactive knowledge based guidance and use of proven medical practices are tools available to the healthcare industry.

The pace of adoption has not met demand and the federal government is stepping in, attempting to speed things up. We may be saying to ourselves, “I wish I had it to do over and I would have…more aggressively achieved deep physician adoption, turned on alerting and knowledge based practices and fully implemented positive ID for BPOC medication administration.” With part of ARRA focusing on clinical alerting, KLAS will be measuring what is working and what is not in the clinical decision support (CDS) arena. We could use your help in defining the improved health outcomes via CDS space, helping us to stratify it and then measure CDS vendor performance.

To some there is no sense of urgency. For me, having recently passed the 60 threshold, I am becoming much better acquainted with my physician and the cadre of clinicians that come with him. I was able to go some 30 years without a physical or any reason to have a physical (bad idea, even if you are healthy). That time is far past. Now my medical record extends geographically across two counties, at least 8 physicians and several physical therapists. I now see the information gaps more clearly than ever and solidly support smart electronic medical records shared by all those that oversee my care. Measuring vendors in this area is likely to improve the products and the adoption.