Patients expect excellent care from their physicians. Unfortunately, not all receive such care and most of us realize this. Many who do understand the wide variation in patient care probably believe it is due to the clinical knowledge and attitude of the provider-a very knowledgeable physician or nurse who is passionate about his or her job will deliver the best care. Although these ingredients are necessary for excellent patient care, today better care can be delivered with modern tools and methods, such as “smart” IV pumps, checklists, registries and EHR’s. Many of these are digital and based upon data. It is necessary for providers to understand data to provide better and safer care today.

Let me give you two examples of care, one assisted with data driven decision-making:

Dr. M is a primary care physician who has been practicing for over 20 years. He still is passionate about the care that he gives his patients. One of his focuses is on patients he has diagnosed with hypertension, as there seems to be an increase in patients with this chronic condition in the past few years. Dr. M believes that he is providing excellent care. He believes that most of his patients adhere to the drug regimen and diet that he has prescribed for them. In a recent visit by his EHR vendor his office was shown how to find population level data on the EHR and registry. The output on hypertension showed that only about 60% of his patients were adhering to their drug regimen and diet. His patients were experiencing more coronary problems than expected. There were a higher percentage of strokes among these patients than he realized too. In other words, many of his patients were not achieving outcomes which would enable active and enjoyable lifestyle. Read the rest of this entry »