Clinical Decision Support Systems

How Clinical Decision Support Systems Improves Quality and Safety of Patient care
The CDSS improves the quality and safety of patient care by the following:
Eliminating the need for unnecessary or incidences of duplicate tests.
Preventing and reducing the risk of costly and life-threatening health complications (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
Providing the right information at the required time to ensure correct decisions
Reducing the risk of errors during patient care processes (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
Encouraging technological improvement to promote a reliable communication system in hospitals.
Providing a more accurate data analysis platform to minimize data errors.
Evidence that CDSS Improves Care Quality and Safety
Evidence that adopting CDSS improves patient safety and quality of care include:
Providing information on time to prevent wrong decisions (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014) which
Reduces the length of hospital stay.Reduces the rate of readmission among patients (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
Reduces patient injury rates and hospital-acquired complications (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
Provides recommendations for care, which increases the chances that care providers reevaluate their decisions when the system implies the presence of errors.
Disadvantages of not Adopting CDSS
The failure to adopt CDSS can be associated with shortcomings such as:
A hospital does not exploit the chance to improve its information system to reduce the possibility of delayed feedback and patient information (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).

Institutions lose the opportunity to reduce the workload among employees
Hospitals fail to exploit the chance to enhance their communication systems (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
Care providers are exposed to the possibility of taking patients through unnecessary tests, which translates to wastage of resources and time.
Reasons behind the Slow Adoption of CDSS
The lack of enthusiastic and widespread adoption of the CDSS can be attributed to:
The high cost associated with the installment of the CDSS systems in hospitals.
The reluctance to accept technological improvements in the healthcare setting (Musen, Middleton, & Greenes, 2014).
The lack of trust in the effectiveness of the system by health care providers.
The assumption that the adoption of CDSS can reduce the need for healthcare providers and threaten the availability of jobs in the industry.
Reference
Musen, M. A., Middleton, B., & Greenes, R. A. (2014). Clinical decision-support systems. In Biomedical Informatics (pp. 643-674). Springer, London.