electronic medical record

In the final installment of a 3-part series, Franklin Gaylis, MD, FACS, Chief Scientific Officer of Genesis Healthcare Partners and Voluntary Professor of Urology at the University of California, San Diego, reviews measures derived from a project looking at the value of a pay for performance model in improving the quality of active surveillance in low-risk prostate cancer. He also considers the utility, simplicity, and economy of using an electronic medical record-embedded template. Dr. Gaylis concludes by suggesting that government entities and physicians should collaborate to create the best medical standards and practices possible as the US healthcare system makes the transition from volume to value.

In part 2 of a 3-part series, Franklin Gaylis, MD, FACS, Chief Scientific Officer of Genesis Healthcare Partners and Voluntary Professor of Urology at the University of California, San Diego, shows how quality reporting improves adherence to best practices in use of active surveillance for low-risk prostate cancer. He reviews the results of a study he and his team began conducting in 2011 which showed that adoption of active surveillance for low-risk prostate cancer increased from 32% to 58% over the course of 3 years as a result of the adoption of reporting standards and reporting transparency whereby doctors could see others’ data. Since widespread adoption of active surveillance is considered a best practice, these data demonstrate how quality reporting can improve care.

In part 1 of a 3-part series, Franklin Gaylis, MD, FACS, Chief Scientific Officer of Genesis Healthcare Partners and Voluntary Professor of Urology at the University of California, San Diego, looks at how improved quality reporting can improve risk stratification for prostate cancer. He explains that quality reporting is expensive and time-consuming, but also necessary, and looks at how it can be improved. As an example, he considers a study by Genesis Healthcare intended to improve documentation and staging templates for digital rectal examinations (DREs) for prostate cancer staging and risk stratification. They found that by leveraging the electronic medical record (EMR) with explicit templates, they were able to increase physician confidence in DRE findings. Dr. Gaylis concludes that by encouraging urology practices to record more accurate and precise DRE information, better templates for reporting can improve patient care.