Release Date: Monday, November 28, 2011

Healthcare initiatives are including payment reform that incentivizes providers to provide better—not more—healthcare. To stay competitive, providers are leveraging information technology at a higher level to manage patient care. Stage 1 of meaningful use lays a solid electronic infrastructure, but that is really a starting point. By itself, an EMR simply does not mean better care, any more than a good road means no accidents. Similar to the adoption of a GPS by motorists, clinical decision support (CDS) tools are emerging to help healthcare providers navigate complex care situations and drive the type of positive clinical outcomes that organizations want. In 2010, KLAS did a perception study to find out what CDS solutions providers were using. This year, KLAS interviewed 404 providers about their CDS tools’ performance to understand the impact those tools are having on patient care.