Friday, June 20, 2008
Interesting Projects !!
Tracking colonoscopies by technique
Two medical societies are developing a program to assess gastroenterologists' performance doing colonoscopies and other common procedures. Gastroenterologists use computer software to tarck details of their technique in colonoscopies, a common procedure to detect abnormalities in the colon, including colon cancers. Doctors record how large a portion of the colon they examine, how many polyps they find and how long it takes them to withdraw their screening tool from the colon. Research has indicated that longer times lead to higher detection rates of polyps, which may be cancerous.
Currently, the practices submit their metrics to a health system, that has compiled data on close to 5000 colonoscopies. As the program expands, the American College of Gastroenterologists, and the Americal Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy are likely to recruit a data management company to take on the data collection job. This push is meant to raise the quality of care by making doctors more conscious of their performance and how it compares with that of their peers. This program also addresses the "pay for performance" programs introduced by health insurers to assess the quality of doctors' care and to link payment to it. By creating a large database, the gastroenterologists hope to show patterns and validate metrics that are practical and medically important to judge quality with.
Eventually the program is expected to include measurements of doctors' performance doing procedures like upper endoscopy. endoscopic ultrasound, and ERCP.
Two medical societies are developing a program to assess gastroenterologists' performance doing colonoscopies and other common procedures. Gastroenterologists use computer software to tarck details of their technique in colonoscopies, a common procedure to detect abnormalities in the colon, including colon cancers. Doctors record how large a portion of the colon they examine, how many polyps they find and how long it takes them to withdraw their screening tool from the colon. Research has indicated that longer times lead to higher detection rates of polyps, which may be cancerous.
Currently, the practices submit their metrics to a health system, that has compiled data on close to 5000 colonoscopies. As the program expands, the American College of Gastroenterologists, and the Americal Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy are likely to recruit a data management company to take on the data collection job. This push is meant to raise the quality of care by making doctors more conscious of their performance and how it compares with that of their peers. This program also addresses the "pay for performance" programs introduced by health insurers to assess the quality of doctors' care and to link payment to it. By creating a large database, the gastroenterologists hope to show patterns and validate metrics that are practical and medically important to judge quality with.
Eventually the program is expected to include measurements of doctors' performance doing procedures like upper endoscopy. endoscopic ultrasound, and ERCP.
# posted by Srivathsan @ 11:29 PM 
