Physician Practice

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Course Project Part III: Physician Practice Lynn Strain IS 566 Informatics and Applications in Healthcare Dr. Alexandro Veletsos June 13, 2011 Abstract The time has come to change the focus of healthcare to the person in need of care instead of on the failing business of healthcare. Perhaps one of the most devastating healthcare concerns is the controversy over the lack of consistency and standardization of physician practice that has negatively impacted patient outcomes. The reason for this variation is because different physicians treat patients with the same diagnosis in very different ways. Variation leads to unnecessary, inappropriate care that is costly and ineffective (Coady, 2002). In the midst of care concerns, despite cultural…show more content…
Hospital executives, MD leaders, and MD champions become role models for IT driven care. To guide and oversee this major physical and cultural transformation, a physician advisory committee is essential to represent all physician interests from workflow changes to order set development to MD engagement. To accomplish the goal of workflow redesign, significant clinical involvement to build the necessary infrastructure to affect practice changes is required. Workflow changes associated with the physician’s practice takes precedence along with the workflow changes incurred by clinical services including the nursing, clinical and pharmacy departments. Access and availability of computer hardware are included as necessary components in practice restructuring. Workflow strategies include location of desktops, laptops, stationary and mobile devices and MD portals for office, clinic and home (Dixon and Zafar,…show more content…
Variation in physician practice can virtually be eliminated with the use of standardized best practice care that is directed by advanced clinical decision making. CPOE eliminates the use of dangerous handwritten orders and outdated order sets which leads to a drastic reduction in medical and adverse errors. According to Barron, 2010, “MDs who changed from paper to electronic prescribing decreased their error rate from 42.5 to 6.6 per 100 prescriptions by eliminating illegibility errors”. In addition, physician decision making processes are elevated and supported with the use of CDSS that offers real time recommendations based on clinical guidelines and evidence based medicine. By using this advanced computerized process, orders and real time data can be viewed in multiple areas eliminating costly, duplicate, unnecessary treatment (Ball, Keil, and Weaver,
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