This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Clinicians hope meaningful use results in better outcomes
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Healthit.gov defines meaningful use as “using certified electronic health record (EHR) technology to improve quality, safety, efficiency and reduce health disparities.” It also states, “Ultimately, it is hoped that meaningful use compliance will result in better clinical outcomes.”
That is a pretty tall order and one very much hinging on hope. So, as a collective society, we roll the dice and hope. We hope that after spending billions of dollars and millions of human hours and sifting through mounds of data we will have better answers for our patients.
As health care providers, the quest for better patient care is at our very core. From the moment we begin our professional training until the day we retire, we strive for better clinical outcomes. We attend conferences, draw from patient experiences, participate in clinical trials and stay abreast of the literature, all in the spirit of providing better care.
Over the years this approach has worked pretty well, as evidenced by the fact that patients live longer and fewer individuals are blinded by conditions such as glaucoma. Unfortunately, while generally successful, it has not provided us with all the answers. Perhaps this is never truer than in glaucoma.
I think we all pretty much agree that for most of our glaucoma patients – for whom we have determined medical management supersedes surgical intervention – a prostaglandin works well as first-line therapy. Where things get a bit murky is when the prostaglandin is not enough.
Should our second-line agent be a carbonic anhydrase inhibitor, alpha-agonist or beta-blocker or even a combination agent? In this issue, we take a hard look at the role of combination agents in managing today’s glaucoma patient.
While our expert colleagues, Drs. Fingeret, Takeda and Thomas provide us with tremendous insight and guidance, they do not provide a consensus. This is for good reason – there is no simple answer. Glaucoma is far too complex of a disease, influenced by individual genetics, related systemic health, lifestyle choices and variables impacting compliance. So, our esteemed colleagues cannot provide us with a definitive answer, only guidance. The question is whether meaningful use will someday provide us with these answers. We can only hope.
Personally, our practice has always strived to provide the most contemporary care possible. We continually educate ourselves, embrace the latest technology and participate in our share of clinical trials. We adopted EHR technology a few years ago and have participated in meaningful use since its inception. While I appreciate the role of EHRs and the intent of meaningful use, I, admittedly, struggle in envisioning how all of this is going to play out. Will meaningful use capture the essence of our patients – each and every one of them? Or will it provide us with more of the same: guidance? Certainly, only time will tell. Until we get there, we can only hope.