The Pittsburgh Business Times reports how evidence-based technologies at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) bring better care to patients and save money for providers:
Doctors and other health care providers nationwide are turning to standardized protocols, based on scientifically proven guidelines, to enhance the treatment they provide. This emerging field is sometimes called evidence-based medicine, and advocates say it promises to improve patient care, reduce mistakes and lower health care costs.
“We’re trying to take our very nice art of medicine and turn it into an engineered process,” said Dr. G. Daniel Martich, vice president of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s electronic medical records project. “It makes the right thing to do the easiest thing to do, and because of that, it’s the cheapest thing to do.”
Treatment guidelines in the form of computer prompts and reminders have been making their way into several UPMC hospitals and affiliated doctors’ offices in recent years. The $402 million deal UPMC recently inked with IBM Corp. is expected to speed implementation of evidence based-medicine over the eight-year life of the agreement.
Here’s how: UPMC will get some 20,000 new computer terminals and other gear as part of the deal. More significant, each partner will contribute $25 million to what is essentially a venture capital fund, which could grow to $200 million. Among other things, the money will be used to develop computerlike devices, software and other products…
Bringing evidence-based medicine to the patient bedside already has begun in several of UPMC’s 18 hospitals. In Presby’s intensive care unit, for example, computer software reminds physicians who are entering medical orders that keeping a patient’s head elevated 30 degrees can reduce the possibility of pneumonia, said Dr. Martich, who is co-director of Presby’s Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.
Even in O’Canada the progress is being made.