Clinical decision support system (CDSS)--effects on care quality.

PURPOSE: Despite their efficacy, some recommended therapies are underused. The purpose of this paper is to describe clinical decision support system (CDSS) development and its impact on clinical guideline adherence. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A new CDSS was developed and introduced in a cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) in 2003, which provided physicians with patient-tailored reminders and permitted data export from electronic patient records into a national quality registry. To evaluate CDSS effects in the CICU, process indicators were compared to a control group using registry data. All CICUs were in the same region and only patients with acute coronary syndrome were included. FINDINGS: CDSS introduction was associated with increases in guideline adherence, which ranged from 16 to 35 per cent, depending on the therapy. Statistically significant associations between guideline adherence and CDSS use remained over the five-year period after its introduction. During the same period, no relapses occurred in the intervention CICU. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Guideline adherence and healthcare quality can be enhanced using CDSS. This study suggests that practitioners should turn to CDSS to improve healthcare quality. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This paper describes and evaluates an intervention that successfully increased guideline adherence, which improved healthcare quality when the intervention CICU was compared to the control group.

Insights into physician scheduling: a case study of public hospital departments in Sweden.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to describe current physician scheduling and concomitant opportunities for improvement in public hospital departments in Sweden. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A total of 13 departments spread geographically across Sweden covering seven different specialties participated in the study. Data were collected through interviews with individuals involved in creating physician schedules. All departments investigated provided copies of the documents necessary for physician scheduling. FINDINGS: Physician scheduling required the temporal coordination of patients, physicians, non-physician staff, rooms and equipment. A six-step process for creating physician schedules could be distinguished: capacity and demand overview, demand goal and schedule setting, vacation and leave requests, schedule creation, schedule revision, and schedule execution. Several opportunities for improvement could be outlined; e.g. overreliance on memory, lacking coordination of resources, and redundant data entering. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS: The paucity of previous studies on physician scheduling lends an exploratory character to this study and calls for a more thorough evaluation of the feasibility and effects of the approaches proposed. The study excluded the scheduling of non-physician staff. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: To improve physician scheduling and enable timeliness, three approaches are proposed: reinforcing centralisation, creating learning opportunities, and improving integration. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This paper is among the few to investigate physician scheduling, which is essential for delivering high quality care, particularly concerning timeliness. Several opportunities for improvement identified in this study are not exclusive to physician scheduling but are pervasive in healthcare processes in general.