When your clinicians are caring for patients, the stakes are high and every decision counts. They will need the best evidence and clinical guidance at their fingertips to answer even the most complex questions with confidence.
But there are many clinical decision support technologies on the market, and some are more proven than others.
How do you choose the right one?
Getting the right answers fast
When making medical decisions, care teams often face “information overload.” Even for the most highly educated and skilled care teams, medical decision-making is challenging given the volume of data that exists and the fact that new findings are being published all the time.
The right clinical decision support solution can help your care team:
- Reach a diagnosis faster.
- Reassure the clinician that the intended course of action is appropriate.
- Avoid unnecessary consulting of senior colleagues or specialists.
Getting the right diagnosis quickly not only improves operational efficiency but also gives the clinician peace of mind—a benefit that is difficult to calculate.
Not all Clinical Decision Support technology is created equal
Your solution should:
• Allow clinical questions to be answered more quickly.
• Help confirm or change medical decisions.
• Help improve care quality metrics and patient outcomes.
More than 100 research studies demonstrate that widespread use of UpToDate® is associated with improved patient outcomes, clinician satisfaction in electronic health records (EHRs), and hospital performance.
Saw a patient with saddle nose - looked it up on UpToDate - probably relapsing polychondritis - suggested referral to ENT for biopsy that confirmed the diagnosis. Without UpToDate, this clinician would have: spent ages looking through journals.1
Researchers at Harvard University2 concluded that, at more than 1,000 hospitals studied over a three-year period, use of UpToDate was associated with improved quality of care for every condition on the Hospital Quality Alliance Metrics and an estimated 372,000 hospital days were saved per year.
Changing medical decisions
A study at the National University Hospital in Singapore3 has shown that around 30% of the time that a clinician views an UpToDate topic, they change a medical decision.
A 2018 study4 estimated 237 million medication errors occurred in the National Health Service in England, and clinical decision support solutions may have saved up to 1,000 lives and £100 million in care costs each year from 2023 to 2024.
Improving patient safety and potentially saving lives
Organizations have been able to realize value by partnering with the right Clinical Decision Support solution. UpToDate can help save more lives every day. The benefit is gained whether in combination with other EHRs or as a convenient reference for care teams in any setting.
The researchers at Harvard found that hospitals using UpToDate experienced shortened hospital stays for their patients, fewer patient deaths, and better-quality performance.
Tangible benefits included
- Better-quality performance
- Reduced length of stay in hospitals
- Fewer deaths
