Reference no: EM133387224
Assignment:
Case Report
Avera Health Plans was founded in 1999 and has since become one of South Dakota's leading health systems. Avera Health Plans is made up of 35 hospitals, 215 primary and specialty clinics, and 40 senior living facilities, and it serves nearly 1 million people. In July 2018, the company launched a clinical systems-wide initiative to implement CDSS to enhance its delivery of health services.
Tracking and monitoring the quality of clinical measures has positive effects on health services delivery by creating clear organizational-wide objectives and goals. Sound data collection best practices are aligned with expanding access to care, improving care, and other positive effects (Kwan et al., 2020; Santilli & Vogenberg, 2015). The integrity of clinical data, such as vital signs and results from laboratory testing, is essential to both clinical diagnoses and therapeutic health interventions.
Data integrity, data validity, and accuracy of clinical documentation are critical to support continuity of care, medical informatics, and disease management. Medical providers and health care professionals are responsible for designing care delivery systems that capture clinical documentation and quality indicators. Studies of CDSS have linked this approach with prompting clinicians to "deliver evidence-based processes of care, discouraging non-indicated care, optimizing drug orders, and improving documentation" (Kwan et al., 2020).
Ultimately, the internal stakeholders at Avera Health Plans decided to implement the CDSS to provide its medical staff with more support for clinical judgment and decision making to improve health outcomes. This type of evidence-based medicine shifts the strategic paradigm to better support continuity of care and long-term care planning (Smith, 2015).
Questions
1. How do outpatient services support continuity of care in the delivery of health services?
2. Why is clinical documentation important in supporting evidence-based medicine?
3. Research and analyze two clinical quality measures that are mandatory for outpatient ambulatory care delivery.