Diabetes care may improve through electronic medical records

Dr Randy Cebul of MetroHealth Medical Center discusses the advantages of "Better Health Greater Cleveland", a system of medical record data combining many area hospital data to improve medical care.

Diabetes care in the Greater Cleveland area is being revolutionized through an integrated elecronic medical record data system. "Better Health Greater Cleveland" reflects the consortium of many area hospitals and medical systems that have combined deidentified data with the purpose to monitor quality care measures and improve care to patients through feedback to medical providers.

This system of electronic medical record data combine data on diabetes, heart failure, high blood pressure and other conditions collected from participating hospitals and provider groups. Area hospitals and groups that are part of BHGC obtain reports that describe the demographics of their patient population along with standard quality measures that are recommended by many physician professional associations and quality tracking agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), National Center for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to improve medical care.

US News and World Report recently featured their program at their website.

Consumers can go to the BHGC site and obtain information on quality measures for diabetes and heart failure among area providers.

Data on depression screening among consortium patients are among the indicators that will be introduced in 2012 reports.