Standardizing Canadian Decision Support Systems

Keith Jansa

doi:10.4172/2157-7420.1000113

Abstract

Adverse events undeniably compromise patient safety. Inadvertent complications attributable to preventable error rather than patient illness or disease suggests a fragmented and dire system of care. Adverse events by definition refer to diagnostic errors, and make up a substantial fraction of all medical errors leading to unnecessary morbidity, deaths, and healthcare costs. The Canadian Adverse Events Study published in 2004 and conducted by the Canadian Institute of Health Information found that the overall rate of adverse events in 2000 was seven point five per one hundred patients admitted to Canadian hospitals, one point six of which were associated with causing death

Highlights

Inclusive to adverse events is whether such events occur because of an act of omission where a given diagnostic test, treatment intervention, or surgical procedure is absent from having been done resulting in a medical error; or by an act of commission where health care professionals direct specific care that results in again medical error, or an adverse incident
With use of a clinical decision support system, when an attending physician meets with a patient, he or she would be able to address the patient in the same context as he or she would prior to having implemented a clinical decision support system
The physician would advise the patient on the type of diagnostic tests that would aid in obtaining a diagnosis

Summary

Standardizing Canadian Decision Support Systems

An evaluation of an antibiotic management system in a single 12-bed Intensive Care Unit over a 3 year period revealed that use of the system resulted in 24 fewer adverse drug reactions and 194 fewer cases of antibioticsusceptibility mismatch These results and others suggest that national implementation of decision support systems could markedly improve patient safety” [10]. Given that clinical decision support systems standardize differential diagnoses amongst health care professionals, both community leaders and governmental officials will have an influential bearing on success of its implementation These leaders will need to promote the intervention, and provide any necessary policy amendments to make certain that the Canadian healthcare system has become homogeneous in differentially diagnosing patients. The program length ought to yield at least 6 months, one year will potentially yield the best results in term of paralleling annual data from prior research conducted on the occurrence of adverse events in Canada

Target Population

Program Intervention

Conclusion