Reinventing CDS Requires Humility in the Face of Overwhelming Complexity

Paul Cerrato and I have created a new book,Reinventing Clinical Decision Support, our first to be published about Platform thinking.  Although it is being published during my tenure at Mayo Clinic, it is not endorsed by Mayo Clinic and represents the personal opinions of Paul and me.  Below is the preface.In our last book, on mobile health(1),  we wrote about the power of words such as cynicism, optimism, and transformation. Another word with powerful connotations is misdiagnosis. To a patient whose condition remains undetected, it is a source of frustration and anger. To a physician or nurse who has become a defendant in a malpractice lawsuit, it can likewise generate frustration and anger as they try to demonstrate that they did everything humanly possible to uncover the source of their patient ’s symptoms.The National Academy of Medicine ’s report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care explains: “It is estimated that 5 percent of U.S. adults who seek outpatient care each year experience a diagnostic error. Postmortem examination research spanning decades has shown that diagnostic errors contribute to approximately 10 percent of pati ent deaths, and medical record reviews suggest that they account for 6 to 17 percent of adverse events in hospitals.”(2) An earlier report from the same group, To Err Is Human, came to a similar disturbing conclusion. The message between the lines of both reports is straightforward: Medical errors , including misdiagnose...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs