Clinical Performance Feedback and Decision Support

Abstract

This chapter focuses on clinical performance feedback and decision support to health professionals, teams, practices, and institutions in the context of improving patient care. It uses the term feedback as shorthand for delivering information about clinical performance provided to patient populations over a specified period of time to professionals, practices, or institutions, for the purpose of increasing the team's or clinician's insight into the quality of care they provide, and improving it when possible. This may occur in the context of mandatory or voluntary initiatives and may be organized by external groups (such as the healthcare system or an insurer) or internal/local teams. The chapter uses the term decision support to describe brief patient or consultation-specific information intended to prompt a professional to perform or avoid a specific clinical action, or make a ("correct") decision (e.g. a diagnosis). It considers the evidence for the effectiveness of computerized decision-support systems.