Clinics and other medical practices throughout the country are establishing internal controls and web-based systems to tackle the issue of quality improvement; this is not only to meet new pay-for-performance benchmarks but to also offer a much higher level of clinical care. Many pharmaceutical and bio-tech organizations have found out that well chosen patient registry software effectively supports all their effort and also greatly improves their success. This article will explain the five essential features for any patient registry system.
To really achieve clinical quality improvement, you need to understand that practices will need to focus carefully on care delivery and also track all the patients and the patients’ challenges as well. Just tracking a few chronic diseases or a subset of patients is pretty cumbersome and hardly ever results in long term improvement.
Most times, the only information that is available for documenting a patient’s medical issues is the administrative data and the data used for billing. Yes, this information was never meant to be used as a source of clinical information on patients, as such, it will most definitely not provide the much needed information when delivering care. The challenge of gathering usable information from this source of unrepresentative and incomplete data is very frustrating for practices that are really trying to meet quality standards and also improve their level of care.
5 Things That Are Needed For an Effective Patient Registry System
- An all-inclusive patient/problem registry of clinically verified data that is not dependent on administrative or billing optimization.
- Patients’ diagnosis recorded in a coded and well structured method, using clinical terms/terminology.
- Proven mechanisms to communicate with patients who are due for services but are not scheduled for a visit.
- Point of care functionality used in order to provide a much easier identification of due items and to also increase visit efficiency.
- Functionality that will allow the entire care team to really focus on delivering quality.
It’s important to understand that a clinical quality management services uses patient registry software to effectively capture data. Effective patient registry systems must be able to track the whole patient population of a clinical practice and the entire set of diagnosis associated with every patient. It must also be able to track problems in a way that is not biased by the needs of administrative data and is also verifiable by clinicians. By using clinical management services, a practice is sure to benefit in a lot of ways:
- Patient registry software will allow providers to effectively manage all of their patients, and also build a population based on multi-morbidity problems. For example, patients who have multiple conditions will have different recommendations or therapies than those with just one condition.
- It will ensure that care decisions are entirely based on accurate and documented set of clinical issues.
- It will help practices to meet the requirements of existing pay-for-performance programs and provide a much more solid foundation for meeting future quality initiatives which are not yet defined.
- Rightly identifies patient population, it also ensures quality calculations that are based on the right denomination of a population measure in order to avoid negative financial implications.
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© 2010 George Ritacco is the Director, Client Services for Global Vision Technologies, a provider of tailored, web-based patient registry software. For more information visit the ClinicalPURSUIT patient registry site.
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