CDS – The Health Care Blog

Are Decision Support Tools Turning Doctors into Idiots?

Apr 21, 2011• 39

By DAVID WILLIAMS

A HealthLeaders article by Gienna Shaw notes that some physicians are reluctant to use computerized decision support (CDS) tools because they fear losing the respect of patients and colleagues. There’s some evidence to support this concern:

In one [study], even tech-savvy undergraduate and graduate computer science students preferred physicians who rely on intuition instead of computer aids.

“Patients object when they ask their doctor a question and then she or he immediately types in the question into their laptop and then reads back the answer. It gives patients the feeling that they just paid a $25 copay to have someone Google something for them,” [study author James] Wolf says.

Shaw argues that this is a transient phenomenon in any case because soon everyone will use CDS as payers demand it and the tools get built in to electronic medical records in a way that’s invisible to patients. She’s probably right, but she’s sparked some interesting thoughts.Continue reading…

Why This Primary Care Doctor Loves His EHR

Feb 7, 2011• 6

By DAVIS LIU, MD

A recent post in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog noted that a study found electronic medical records don’t improve outpatient quality. The authors of the Archives of Internal Medicine article, Electronic Health Records and Clinical Decision Support Systems, correctly points out that we should be skeptical and “doubt [the] argument that the use of EHRs is a “magic bullet” for health care quality improvement, as some advocates imply.”

This should surprise no one. Were we that naive to think that simply installing health information technology (HIT) in the medical field would generate significant improvement in outcomes? Does simply installing computers in our classrooms improve educational test scores?

Of course not.

The excellent commentary after the article makes some plausible reasons why the clinical decision support (CDS) didn’t seem to improve outcomes on 20 quality indicators. First, it isn’t clear that the CDS implemented across the various doctors’ offices and emergency rooms actually addressed the indicators studied. Second, the data studied is already dated (from the 2005 to 2007 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey), a long time in technology terms (iPhone first debuted in 2007). The authors of the original article also point out that there is some evidence that institution specific use of CDS actually improves quality. Whether this can be scaled to the national level is the question.