Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-based Practice

Med City news reports that “Dermatology-specific diagnostic decision support technology does not significantly change how often hospital-based physicians call in specialists, suggesting that doctors still want the expertise of dermatologists even when they have tools available to help with differential diagnoses, a new study shows.”

“In the 12 months before and 18 months following adoption of the VisualDx diagnostic decision support system at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, the average number of inpatient consultations with dermatologists stayed at 1.0 per month….”

“This is important because these tools by design suggest numerous potential diagnoses, which could result in an increase in unnecessary testing and specialty consultation, and associated costs and harms, particularly in the hands of less experienced clinicians,”  said corresponding author Dr. Craig Umscheid, director of the Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-based Practice…’