National Decision Support Company experiences 50% increase in monthly decision support transactions

ANDOVER, Mass., April 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- National Decision Support Company (NDSC) today announced that its registries now process and record more than 300,000 decision support sessions per month—an increase of over 100,000 monthly transactions in just the past six months.

NDSC attributes this increase to growing adoption of its baseline solution, ACR Select, as well as expansion of its clinical content community, partner integrations and availability through an online web portal.  Each decision support session represents an ordering providers consultation of the company's solution in order to determine the appropriateness of a medical test.

The company's solution has been adopted by more than 90 healthcare provider organizations seeking to improve the consistency, quality, and traceability of imaging service delivery through integration of Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) into physician workflows.

Rockford Health System is just one example of an organization that partnered with NDSC to deliver its solution across the enterprise integrated with their EHR. Rockford's implementation encompassed AUC support for MRI, CT, ultrasound and nuclear medicine orders as well as additional decision support rules to support local radiology protocols.

"Rockford Health System is proud to be recognized among the best of the best when it comes to leveraging our EHR," said Dennis L'Heureux, MS, CPHIMS, LFHIMSS, Senior Vice President for IT Planning and CIO, Rockford Health System. "In very short order we have moved beyond implementation to leverage the many features and benefits that clinical automation and process redesign can attain. More importantly, is how our interdisciplinary teams continue to work together to meet the many challenges for preparing our organization to meet triple aim objectives and the transition from fee-for-service to fee-for-value."

The organization's successful implementation of ACR Select within their EHR was the basis for their receipt of a HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 Ambulatory Award.

Additional provider organizations leveraging ACR Select include:

• Premier Healthcare, providing health care to Southwestern Ohio through member hospitals and affiliate organizations in seven counties.
• CentraCare Health, a not-for-profit health care system that provides comprehensive, high-quality care to people throughout central Minnesota.
• Denver Health, a comprehensive, integrated health organization providing health care for more than twenty-five percent of Denver's population.
• ProMedica, a locally owned, nonprofit healthcare organization serving northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.
• HealthEast, the largest health care provider in the Twin Cities' East Metro area of Minnesota.

In addition to its evolving imaging portfolio and built in analytics tools—which now include expanded imaging content sets from the American College of Radiology (ACR), the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and Choosing Wisely®, an initiative of the ABIM Foundation, representing content from more than 70 medical societies—NDSC is expanding efforts to deliver payer criteria and automate claims management.

"We enable physician interaction with national standard AUC from multiple sources directly within the EHR workflow and deliver guidance at the point of care to help providers make more informed decisions about the most appropriate medical test for a patient," said Bob Cooke, VP of Marketing, NDSC. "The continued rapid adoption of ACR Select is validation of our integrated delivery approach."

NDSC will be demonstrating its latest developments at HIMSS 2015, booth #7419, April 13 – 15, 2015, Chicago, IL.

About National Decision Support CompanyNational 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 care pathways. 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.

About ACR Select
ACR Select, National Decision Support Company's (NDSC) foundational solution, was launched in 2012 under a collaboration with the American College of Radiology (ACR) to deliver a complete web service version of ACR Appropriateness Criteria® (AC). ACR AC is a comprehensive national standards clinical decision support database that provides evidence-based decision support for the appropriate utilization of all medical imaging procedures. More than 300 volunteer physicians, representing more than 20 radiology and non-radiology specialty organizations, participate on the ACR AC expert panels, continuously updating these nationally transparent guidelines, and providing real-time access to the latest medical imaging decision support. NDSC delivers ACR Select through computerized ordering and electronic health record (EHR) systems so healthcare organizations can effortlessly consume Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) and ensure that the right patient gets the right scan for the right indication. For more information, visit www.ACRselect.org.