Presenters: Julie Sanderson-Austin, Vice President of Quality Management and Research, American Medical Group Association; John Cuddeback, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Informatics Officer of Anceta, LLC, health informatics subsidiary of the American Medical Group Association (AMGA)

    Every time a clinician sees a patient, he/she engages in information gathering, interpretation, and clinical decision making. Evidence-based guidelines are available for many common conditions. However, complex patients may fall into an “inferential gap,” presenting with a combination of significant comorbidities not covered by current guidelines. Recommended therapies for some conditions may aggravate other conditions. This session will explore the prevalence of such situations in typical clinical practice, using a collaborative data warehouse. We will discuss the role of learning from clinical data in guiding care and minimizing the risk of harm for complex patients.
    After this presentation you will be able to:

• Explain how complexity of patients with multiple conditions may present the potential for sub-optimal care.
• Improve their ability to use clinical data to identify instances of potential harm to patients.
• Identify instances where clinical databases may be used to understand patterns of care and outcomes in real-world clinical settings, to assist in decision making.