Wednesday, May 16, 2007

BLOGSCAN - Does Doing Surveys and Having Patient Registries Make a Doctor More "Patient-Centered?"

On the Retired Doc's Thoughts blog is a post criticizing bureaucratically derived measures of quality of care. It seems that to some, for doctors to provide "patient-centered care" requires them to use electronic medical records (EMRs), set up patient registries, and survey their own patients about quality of care. Although EMR advocates hype them as a panacea, readers of MedInformaticsMD's comments on Health Care Renewal will realize they have not yet lived up to that promise. As a (reformed?) health services researcher, I certainly value patient registries and survey instruments. But given how hard it is to design, execute, and interpret results from these tools, I wonder how merely having them available makes a doctor's care more "patient-centered?" Read Retired Doc's even crustier comments.

1 comment:

InformaticsMD said...

We learn that, for example that the American Board of Internal Medicine now requires in their competency maintenance scheme that physicians show competence in patient registries development and survey feedback.

They conclude stating "physicians should be well positioned (once they get the right tools) to provide the services and care that patients want and have the right to expect"


This is beyond absurd.

It just so happens that biomedical registry development (which requires strong competencies in biomedical data modeling, controlled terminologies and other areas, with all the nuances and idiosyncrasies these activities entail) will not be a competency most physicians will want to, or need to, have.

See, for example, this story on how biomedical data modeling was severely farkled by the "experts." This story too.