DataDerm™: Better your practice, better the specialty
Dermatology World talks with Academy President-Elect George Hruza, MD, MBA — one of the earliest adopters of DataDerm™, the Academy’s clinical data registry. Dr. Hruza shares how DataDerm has helped improve his day-to-day practice, and why participation in DataDerm is so important for the future of the specialty.
DW: How have you used the data from DataDerm to make practice improvements?
Dr. Hruza: We have been able to see how much time it takes to notify patients of lab results — a quality improvement measure that’s important to my practice. Using DataDerm, you can see how long it takes to receive pathology results back, and how long it takes to inform patients of the results. It was eye-opening to see that it actually took us more than a week from the biopsy to the time we actually notified the patient. Was it because the pathologist was taking a long time to get us the report? Was it because the report sat at the office and I didn’t look at it? Or was it that the nurses didn’t report it? There are all these steps, and you can improve and refine the process to provide better care for patients.
A few minor tweaks reduced our turnaround time of getting results to patients by 30%.
In our practice, we figured out that the problem was getting lab results into the EHR in a timely manner and setting up a to-do list to flag incoming results for me to see. A few minor tweaks reduced our turnaround time of getting results to patients by 30%. To me, that made a difference, and DataDerm allowed me to follow our progress.
DW: Can you share an example of how DataDerm gives you practical feedback?
Dr. Hruza: Let’s say we have a new nurse and she has not been recording blood pressure. If you are reviewing your DataDerm dashboard and notice your percent or rate of blood pressure recordings decreasing, you’d want to investigate why this was happening. Maybe it’s because we didn’t tell her we collect blood pressure on everybody, or maybe the nurse decided not to do it on cosmetic patients. For any number of reasons, you discover that information by simply looking at your dashboard. It tells you whether you are doing all these things, or if you are dropping off somewhere. DataDerm allows you to discover it sooner rather than later so that you can maintain quality, or even improve.
Another example is with a measure called Closing the referral loops: Receipt of specialist report, that assesses the quality of the referring doctor. It’s important to receive those reports because you send a patient off to another physician and may not know what happens to them, potentially, unless the doctor sends you a report. If you check your dashboard and you’re not in the high 90s, then you can see whether the issue is with a specific doctor not sending reports in a timely manner. This gives you the opportunity to communicate with that physician or potentially change the physician that you refer patients to. I’m a Mohs surgeon, so I get the referrals. However, this would be a great way for physicians to check up on me and see whether I’m doing a good job with their patients.
I also love the dashboard! Maybe it’s because I’m a bit nerdy, but it affirms when you’re doing well. It makes me feel like I’m doing right by my patients.
DW: What’s your favorite thing about DataDerm?
Dr. Hruza: It’s completely in the background. Once DataDerm is set up, it runs by itself — it’s seamless. I also love the dashboard! Maybe it’s because I’m a bit nerdy, but it affirms when you’re doing well. It makes me feel like I’m doing right by my patients.
DW: How does DataDerm help with quality reporting?
Dr. Hruza: It’s almost as simple as pressing a button at the end of the year to submit everything. DataDerm tells you if you are not performing well on measures early enough so that you have time to fix issues or make improvements. Then you can catch up and still aim for full credit. This is especially important now because there are significant bonuses and penalties associated with MIPS. Anyone who monitors their quality measures using DataDerm should be able to score 100%.
DW: Aside from the benefit of streamlined MIPS reporting, why should the specialty collect data?
Dr. Hruza: Access to new and better data may prompt the development of new quality measures that are directly applicable to dermatologists. Practices will benefit from having quality measures that are actually meaningful to them. Collecting “big” data on dermatology practices will help us tell our story to regulators, legislators, and insurers; develop best practices; and improve dermatologic patient care. This aspect of DataDerm is more altruistic because it doesn’t help you that minute, but it is something that will have a huge impact on our specialty over time, especially as DataDerm aggregates more data — data we need your help collecting!
Whether you use an EHR or paper charts — you can get started using DataDerm in three steps. There is no cost to members for participating in DataDerm (there is a nominal fee for submitting MIPS data to CMS through DataDerm).
