A Team-based Approach to Integrating Evidence into Population Health

Background – Many barriers exist for clinicians when applying the principals of evidence-based medicine in everyday practice, which can lead to wide variations in care. The Center for Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) was established to support clinicians’ ability to provide high quality, evidence-based care. The goal of the Center is to improve the care delivered at MUSC through the creation of evidence-based order sets and guidelines for clinicians. This process involves working with inter-professional teams to identify questions of interest, collaborating with medical librarians to systematically review pertinent literature, using the GRADE approach to appraise evidence, and facilitating the development of clinical practice recommendations to drive the creation of evidence-based order sets and guidelines.

Methods - Advancements in health care management have prompted MUSC to adopt the Patient Centered Medical Homes model in MUSC’s Primary Care Clinics to better understand and replicate best practices within total population health. To assist with this, the Center is expanding its reach to include the support of evidence-based care for total population health, in all phases, with a focus on lowering total medical expenditures for Charleston metro area residents.

Results – The primary outcomes are the development and evaluation of evidence-based guidelines for care across the health spectrum, with a focus on primary and secondary prevention, for use in ambulatory care.

Conclusions – This framework has proven useful in the delivery of comprehensive, coordinated, evidence-based care across the clinical spectrum for inpatients at MUSC, and the expansion to total population health will substantially magnify its reach.