Clinical Decision Support - interesting info from CMS

Spotlight On: Clinical Decision Support

07/21/2014

News Updates | July 21, 2014

Learn More about Clinical Decision Support Interventions

Clinical Decision Support (CDS) is a key functionality of health IT that contributes to improved quality of care and enhanced outcomes by avoiding errors and adverse events, improving efficiencies, reducing costs, and enhancing provider and patient satisfaction.

In Stage 1 of meaningful use, eligible professionals and eligible hospitals must implement one CDS rule. In Stage 2, eligible professionals and eligible hospitals must implement five CDS interventions and enable and implement functionality for drug-drug and drug-allergy interaction.

New CMS Guidance for Clinical Decision Support Interventions
Although the trigger intervention certification criteria require EHR technology to produce an alert at relevant points during patient care, the meaningful use objectives give providers flexibility in the types of CDS interventions they employ, and do not limit them to “pop-up” alert interventions.

Providers can meet the objectives by using other kinds of CDS, including, but not limited to:

  • Clinical guidelines
  • Condition-specific order sets
  • Focused patient data reports and summaries
  • Documentation templates
  • Diagnostic support
  • Contextually relevant reference information

For more information on CDS, review the Clinical Decision Support tipsheet and the new FAQ.

You should definitely have a primary and a secondary plan for CDS. Why? Sometimes the automated CDS recommendations are disabled by either support as part of researching a ticket you submitted or at your request due to performance issues.  Having a back up method gives you peace of mind that CDS recommendations are always on :)