The relationship between office system tools and evidence-based care in primary care physician practice

A number of office system tools have been developed to improve the rates of preventive services and enhance the quality of medical care in practice settings. New approaches to measuring physician adherence to evidence-based standards of treatment, offer a unique opportunity to examine the link between the use of office system tools and evidence-based practices in primary care. Using episode-based profiling measures of adherence as the criterion, results from this investigation suggest that the application of simple physician reminders can be an effective technique for promoting evidence-based treatment. The data also reveal that the influence of health information technology (HIT) resources on adherence was not exclusively positive. Specifically, adherence to evidence-based standards was higher for primary care practices that employed HIT resources judiciously. In contrast, extensive use of personal digital assistants was negatively associated with adherence. Despite concerns directed towards the new generation of episode-based profiling measures, results from this research indicate that the measures behave similarly to traditional measures of quality.