National Decision Support Company Surpasses 1 Million Decision Support Transactions Per Month with ACR Select

CHICAGO, Nov. 29, 2015  /PRNewswire/ -- National Decision Support Company (NDSC) continues to experience rapid expansion of its client base, including notable statewide implementations. As a result, ordering providers now access the company's flagship solution, ACR Select, more than 1 million times per month—all from within their EHR order entry workflow. ACR Select provides real-time feedback on the most appropriate imaging test for a patient's condition and has been implemented at over 100 healthcare systems nationally, representing over 800 individual facilities.

"We've seen widespread deployments across health systems and imaging groups in a number of states, including Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, South Carolina, New York, Connecticut and Virginia," said Michael Mardini, CEO, NDSC. "This critical mass adoption is a significant achievement for our organization and speaks to the value our clients place on the completeness of ACR Select." This increase in utilization further validates that the medical community truly values the delivery of EMR-embedded, actionable and credible evidence-based guidance.  Furthermore, the adoption rate and trajectory is a reflection of the acceptance and advancement of the understanding of how to value and leverage the EMR to improve the overall efficiency in patient care.  "We feel fortunate to be able to participate during such a special time in the evolution of health information technology," said Mardini.

According to Dr. Justin Chang, VP, Resource Stewardship, Hospital Service and Contracting, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Colorado, "by leveraging the 3,000 search-enabled clinical indications contained within ACR Select, ordering providers are able to correctly match over 90% of their medical imaging orders to clinical indications contained within ACR Select within their first month of clinical use."

With the recently announced update to the ACR's Appropriateness Criteria, ACR Select now covers over 15,000 clinical end points in addition to the more than 3,000 clinical scenarios.

"Covering almost 1,000 individual CPT codes, ACR Select reflects the efforts of thousands of physicians, representing 27 medical specialty societies, working over the past 25 years and grading nearly 6,500 peer-reviewed articles," said Mardini. "It is the most complete corpus of imaging content available and a living, breathing library as each new implementation creates an opportunity to improve the offering and expand not only the criteria through our advanced authoring tools, but the delivery platform capabilities as well."

The utility of ACR Select assumes even more significance now that clients are living in an ICD-10 world.  "Accurately capturing a structured reason for the exam at the point of encounter will ensure we can accurately protocol and interpret the exam," said Dr. Colin Segovis, Radiologist, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

In addition to reaching a new adoption milestone, the company is installing its first site in Vermont. "The fact that Epic was completely behind our adoption of ACRselect was a big plus for us in our decision to choose ACR Select," said Dr. Kristen DeStigter, Interim Chair, Department of Radiology, University of Vermont Medical Center. "Decision support has huge potential for us and at the state level, we're already piloting prior authorization exemptions for spine MRI." The experience in Vermont has proven that by streamlining the ordering process, and using the ACR Appropriateness Criteria as a guidepost, provider organizations can improve the physician and patient experience. "Leveraging ACR Select, we'll be able to extend our imaging stewardship across all care settings and modalities through EHR-integrated decision support and extend the reach of our accountable care organization to cover imaging.," said DeStigter.

ACR Select continues to evolve from years of experience and hundreds of installations as NDSC focuses on meeting the needs of the market. "We are committed to offering powerful authoring tools to help address local clinical and payer requirements, creating clinical scenario and pathway driven workflows, adding Google-like search capabilities, and adding advanced reporting and analytics," said Mardini.

NDSC will be demonstrating its latest developments, including integrations with leading EHRs, at RSNA 2015, booth #3153, November 29 – December 3, 2015, Chicago, IL.

About ACR Select
ACR Select is a digitally published version of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Appropriateness Criteria (AC), which covers more than 1,000 exams, 3,000 clinical scenarios and 15,000 discrete clinical endpoints.  This market-validated gold standard Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) was created over the span of 25 years by thousands of physicians—representing more than 20 medical specialty societies reviewing over 6,500 discrete pieces of evidence—and has been the standard for virtually ever payer-driven utilization and quality management program for more than two decades. The process to author these criteria exceeds the rigor specified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 for provider-led entities to author qualified AUC.

About National Decision Support Company
National Decision Support Company (NDSC) provides integrated solutions for developing, maintaining, accessing, delivering, and analyzing actionable, standards-based Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) for imaging, lab, and the healthcare enterprise. The company partners with healthcare provider organizations and national medical societies—including American College of Radiology (ACR), American College of Cardiology (ACC), and European Society of Radiology (ESR)—to structure content and deliver it through physician-centric workflows. NDSC's clinical solution set provides physicians access to the latest evidence-based approaches to medicine, allows providers to develop and deliver local care pathways and protocols, and lets healthcare organizations continuously analyze the impact that AUC has on care delivery without disrupting the doctor-patient relationship. For more information, visit www.NationalDecisionSupport.com.

SOURCE National Decision Support Company

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