Evidence-Based Medicine: A Powerful Tool for Supporting Physician Engagement and Improving Value-Based Care Outcomes

Healthcare administrators, value analysis, and clinical leaders constantly strive for greater performance, better clinical outcomes, and higher physician engagement. But while the need to nurture and achieve these priorities all at once remains strong, there is an underlying struggle on how to accomplish these distinct, yet interdependent goals.

Andrew Furman, MD, MMM, FACEP, Executive Director, Clinical Excellence at ECRI delved into these challenges as a featured speaker at the member-only 2021 Spring Vanguard Meeting of the American Association for Physician Leadership held on Friday, June 11.

Dr. Furman was part of an expert panel with other physician leaders that addressed the topic, “Healthcare Finance Issues: Value-Based Care.” As an experienced emergency room physician and administrator, he offered insight that can be used as a best practice for healthcare organizations across the spectrum of care. Be sure to watch the short video for useful and actionable insight. Also included are some key takeaways below to help you get the conversation started at your organization.

Improved Physician Engagement is crucial and should be part of your strategy.

Healthcare administrative and clinical leaders often cite the need for physician engagement in their efforts to provide evidence-based healthcare of the highest quality and to lower costs. To achieve this, it is important to maintain open communication with physicians and promote ownership of the best evidence-based medicine.

Better physician engagement helps drive informed decision-making leading to improved patient care and outcomes.

Healthcare is moving at a dizzying pace. It’s not easy to make clinical decisions about evolving technology, drugs, devices, and procedures, especially when leaders are evaluating items outside of their particular area of clinical expertise. These decisions affect clinical outcomes and financial performance, so encouraging more well-rounded conversations using objective evidence and diverse stakeholder input and collaboration are essential.

The use of Clinical Evidence Assessment is a powerful tool to help healthcare organizations engage physicians and better position the organization to meet its clinical and financial goals. 

There’s a lot of information out there. Whether it comes directly from manufacturers, the internet, or word-of-mouth, leaders must “consider the source” and ensure that decisions are rooted in facts, not anecdotal evidence. Independent, unbiased clinical evidence assessments can support a contextual dialogue between physicians and physician leaders and promote the best and balanced evidence-based medicine practice. This approach has been successful for countless organizations across the healthcare spectrum. It also provides leaders with the assurances and information they need to make not only good decisions, but effective ones.

How are you engaging with physicians and physician leaders when making new health technology decisions at your organization?  

Discover more about the importance of leveraging Evidence-based medicine for improved decision-making and ECRI’s Clinical Evidence Assessment.