Strategies to improve care using evidence-based medicine

There are a number of challenges to implementing evidence-based medicine. This paper will discuss the reasons why a chasm might exist between best evidence and current practice, the potential strategies of bringing evidence-based medicine to the bedside, and the use of it by physicians to improve care for individual patients.. Influencing clinical decisions is critical to achieving quality, safety and cost results. The potential to improve the quality of care exists if physicians inform individual patient decisions with evidence-based information on what represents the best course of treatment. Between 80% and 90% of health care costs are directly or indirectly determined by clinical decisions. In the US, regulatory organizations, such as the joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and the Center for Medicare Services (CMS), evaluate the quality of care that is being provided at hospitals. Moreover, certain employer groups and coalitions of employer groups are developing strategies to evaluate the care provided to patients in hospitals. The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of more than 100 employer groups that are actively seeking strategies to evaluate and improve the quality of patient care. In addition, there has been an emphasis on reducing adverse drug events and medication errors. However, it has been reported that 81% of all patient safety issues are unrelated to medication errors((1)).