Medical practitioners need access to clinical decision support solutions across Australia to improve diagnostic accuracy and support new flexible models of patient care, a new survey found.
Wolters Kluwer surveyed 2000 GPs and specialists across Australia for the 2020 Clinical Supports Survey: How Australian GPs are Improving Patient Outcomes with Clinical Decision Support. The Survey found 100 per cent of GPs agree a clinical decision support solution is integral to better patient care, and 95 per cent of specialists say these solutions are vital to flexibly delivering patient care from any location.
The news comes as 10 per cent of Australians delay getting life-saving checkups at their local GP due to ongoing COVID-19 fears, according to Medicare.
The survey also found:
● 94 per cent of GPs agreed clinical decision support solutions are critical to help minimise diagnostic errors now and in the future;
● 90 per cent of GPs and specialists agreed doctors need clinical decision support solutions so they have flexibility to access information anywhere, on any device;
● 88 per cent of GPs agreed clinical decision support solutions help share information with patients; and
● 75 per cent of GPs and specialists agreed they need a clinical decision support solution to help increase productivity.
“For 30 years, we've been talking about evidence-based medicine, and while everybody understands the concept, it's difficult to bring it into practice, because everything changes so rapidly,” said Dr Denise Basow, President and CEO, Clinical Effectiveness, Wolters Kluwer, Health. “Clinical decision support solutions like UpToDate deliver evidence-based information to medical practitioners at the point of care, empowering them to make the best care decisions with confidence.”
UpToDate is the only clinical decision support resource associated with improved outcomes.
More than 90 research studies demonstrate its impact on improved patient care and hospital performance. For example, a recent study found clinicians who used UpToDate had a significantly lower rate of diagnostic errors compared with a control group without UpToDate: 2 percent versus 24 percent. The significance of this study is underscored by the challenge that diagnostic errors have traditionally been hard to identify.
The Wolters Kluwer survey was conducted across more than 2000 clinicians, including GPs and Specialists across Australia, with 576 respondents. The survey was sent to current UpToDate users only, with data obtained between September 2018 to February 2020.
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