Does decision support actually work?

by Lynn McVey The medical imaging website Aunt Minnie.com asked the question, "Does decision support work?" I got tricked at first, because I thought it was a question about decisions. Aunt Minnie's question was about the appropriateness of imaging ordering, which happens to be experiencing growing pains. For years, I've always questioned the accuracy of "decision support." When we play the game "Telephone," even the simplest phrase, "The moon is made from green cheese" ends up as "The cream cheese on the spoon is creamy." I exaggerate, yet something always gets lost in translation. This is why I always perform my own decision support. Years ago, for many months, the emergency room's volume differed between our internal data and the ER physicians' external billing data. It drove me crazy. I finally drilled down the data to the individual patient names, and reconciled one list against the other. They say the "joy is in the findings," and this brought me joy, plus a good night's sleep at last. Our internal decision support team was counting the volume of ER patients upon discharge. What else would a non-clinical/IT-decision-support-staffer count? Luckily, I'm a clinical COO who knows 20 percent of ER patients get admitted, and will subsequently be defined as an IP (in-patient). This was the discrepancy the two teams argued about for months. It was fixed immediately. To me, it doesn't make sense to delegate decision support away from decision-makers. As a self-proclaimed...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs