QuantiaMD Improves Physicians' Patient Safety Practices
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Increased confidence and better outcomes result from engaging in expert-led presentations.
As part of a guest column posted to Health IT Outcomes, Elsevier’s Michelle Troseth writes, “Healthcare is in a state of flux. Providers, payers, government, vendors, and patients will no longer tolerate a system dominated by care silos, fragmentation, costly duplication, and uneven outcomes. A re-invigorated healthcare system will take root only if professionals advance a framework for interprofessional care coordination and collaboration across the expanding continuum.”
That sentiment is backed up by the results of a QuantiaMD report which fond 65 percent of physicians implemented better patient safety practices after participating in expert-led presentations within Quantia’s web and mobile physician community. The findings indicate a direct relationship between delivery of relevant clinical content by trusted experts in a convenient online format and changes in the way physicians think about and practice medicine, potentially leading to improved quality of life for millions of patients and significant cost savings for the health systems that serve them, according to a release.
The report is based on opinions of a panel of physicians who had interacted with specific, expert-led presentations on QuantiaMD including Common and Costly PICC-related DVTs, presented by Dr. Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc, University of Michigan; Reducing Risk of PICC-Associated Bloodstream Infection, also presented by Dr. Chopra; and Sepsis: A Review and Update, delivered by Margaret Johnson, MD, Mayo Clinic Florida.
After the DVT presentation, 59 percent of respondents reported it influenced how they manage the use of PICCs to reduce deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Meanwhile, 55 percent of respondents reported the PICC presentation influenced how they manage the use of PICCs to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), and 81 percent of respondents reported that the Sepsis presentation influenced how they diagnose and manage sepsis in patient care. Ninety-two percent reported they have adopted at least one of the key recommendations and 72 percent said they may have prevented a sepsis patient death using the Surviving Sepsis Guidelines.
The three examples above represent millions of dollars in annual costs savings for a health system of 3,000 providers serving one million patients. Such savings could be realized if the same proportion of physicians in that sample system reported a similar level of influence as our survey respondents.
“In an effort to reduce costs and improve outcomes, health systems are making clinicians more accountable for infection control rates and other patient safety measures. In fact, 40 percent of our surveyed physicians say they have access to infection control data and/or reports from their health system’s analytic system, and are expected to act on this information as it relates to their practice,” said Dan Malloy, Executive Vice President of Quantia.
“Health systems are finding that our platform helps them better engage their physicians on the topics that drive these patient safety measures through concise, expert-led interactive presentations—all within a community that physicians already value and trust.”