About Clinical Decision Support
Clinical Decision Support intervention protocols are designed to manage the clinic’s patient population. While often used for chronic care management, these guidelines are extremely versatile and can improve health outcomes for all patients. Clinical Decision Support (CDS) can also be used to create an alert in Multi-System and Exam encounters or to communicate with patients using Patient Reminders.
How Does Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Work?
A CDS is comprised of the following required elements: a CDS name, a defined patient population, an intervention, and a time frame for the intervention. These elements provide a clinical decision framework for the treatment of specific patient populations.
Once these elements are defined within a Clinical Decision Support, all patients who meet the criteria will be attached to the CDS and can be tracked through reporting or managed using encounter-level alerts.
Elements of a CDS
General: the name and summary of the CDS and the rationale or clinical recommendation that supports the guideline are detailed in the General tab.
Population: the patient population is defined over four tabs. In these tabs, a user can select demographic criteria, such as race and age, and clinical criteria, such as diagnoses, medications, and vital signs, to specify which patients should be included in the CDS.
Intervention: the treatment or clinical action required for patients who meet the population criteria is defined in the Intervention tab. Interventions can include orders or screenings, and although multiple interventions can be specified per CDS, a patient only needs to meet one to satisfy the CDS.
Timing: how frequently an intervention needs to be performed for a patient is specified in the Timing tab. The frequency of the intervention can span multiple years or months or be required as often as every visit.
Source Attributes: a read-only view of the CDS source information, CDS criteria, and history of changes made to the CDS.