Products and Services
Baseline Needs Assessments
The ultimate goal of healthcare educational programs is to improve patient outcomes by enhancing clinician performance and reducing barriers. In order to improve performance, an understanding of the needs, practice patterns, attitudes and preferences of healthcare professionals is essential. Evidence shows that educational programs that are based on well conducted needs assessments are more effective in improving performance and outcomes. Independent assessments provide essential insights that improve the design and implementation of healthcare educational programs.
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Through our baseline needs assessment process, we help identify clinician practice gaps, unmet educational needs, and barriers to optimal care. The baseline assessment answers questions such as:
- What are the current practice patterns?
- What are the barriers to optimally managing patients?
- Why does practice vary?
- Are needs different by segments of clinicians?
- Where should education take place?
Based on the data, Outcomes provides an educational plan to optimize resources. Baseline needs assessments help establish and independently document a benchmark for measuring improvement and provide insight into optimizing the development of effective educational activities.
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Baseline Needs Assessments are typically used in the following industries: Pharmaceutical/Biotech companies, government/not-for-profit organizations, medical associations and societies, medical device companies, insurance companies and managed care organizations.
Reference: Norman, G. R., S. I. Shannon and M. L. Marrin (2004). "The need for needs assessment in continuing medical education." BMJ 328(7446): 999-1001.
Performance/Outcomes Assessments
In the face of scarce resources, supporters and administrators of healthcare education programs are eagerly interested in assessing the impact of their programs. However, the pressure to demonstrate program impact may yield disappointing or false results. This is often at the expense of critical processes that underlie the evaluation process such as, defining the appropriate measures, testing the measures, setting the appropriate sample size and study design, performing the appropriate statistical analysis, and reporting meaningful metrics.
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Our evaluation processes and services offer an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of educational programs using validated assessment techniques and rigorous evaluation protocols. For each evaluation study, we take into account the measures, the assessment technique, study design, and analysis plan. Our reports include the purpose of the study, describe the methodology and measures, and provide standardized objective metrics for internal and external reporting purposes.
Likewise, our processes are similar when assessing the impact of educational programs on patient outcomes. Based on the objectives of the program, we design and implement patient studies to examine changes in health status, patient knowledge/understanding, adherence to treatment, or communication patterns. Our patient studies are submitted for Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval.
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Performance/Outcomes assessments are typically used in the following industries:
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Geographic Assessment
Despite numerous public and private health services, "health for all" still remains inadequate, partly due to poor geographical distribution of health services. Using geographical information system (GIS) technology, spatial analysis can be used to examine the relationships between access, community resources, and disease burden in order to tailor educational programs and place strategic health services that improve the quality of care in a particular region.
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Our geographic services provides an analytic framework for integrating and managing multiple sources of information and helps link information to location data. For example, we can help:
- Determine geographic distribution of diseases
- Analyze spatial and temporal demographic trends
- Map populations at risk
- Stratify risk factors by location
- Assess resource allocation by geographic region
- Determine optimal placement of educational interventions
- Analyze referral patterns
- Evaluate effectiveness of programs by region.
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Geographic assessments are typically used in the following industries: Pharmaceutical/Biotech Companies, government/not-for-profit organizations, medical device companies, insurance companies and managed care organizations
Information Seeking Reports
Clinicians are constantly challenged to stay up-to-date with rapidly changing medical information and important new medical advances that may improve the health of their patients. At the same time, access to sources of information has changed radically with the use of the internet and new media. Understanding how clinicians access medical information and what sources they trust is key to reducing the time of adoption of new medical advances and improving patient care.
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We have collected over 2000 responses from clinicians across 16 specialties about:
- The information sources they rely on for staying up-to-date
- Where they go for information
- How they prefer to receive information
- What information sources are most important to decision-making
- Barriers to integrating new information into practice
These reports are available for purchase. For information please contact 205-259-1500
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Information Seeking Reports are typically used in the following industries:
pharmaceutical/biotech Companies, medical education/communication companies, government/not-for-profit organizations, medical associations and societies, medical device companies, insurance companies and managed care organizations
Patient Assessments
What is the impact of continuing education on patient health?
In collaboration with our partners, we design and implement patient studies to assess the impact of continuing education on patient health.
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Patient studies assess the impact of continuing education on:
- Patient health status
- Level of knowledge and awareness of patients about their condition
- Self-efficacy in managing their condition
- Attitudes of patients towards specific treatments
- Adherence to clinician recommendations
Assessment process:
- Patient assessments are conducted using patient surveys or chart audit tools
- IRB approval is obtained for all patient studies
- The design of patient studies is customized to specific therapeutic areas
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CE Outcomes Selected Publications
- Casebeer, L., Shillman, R., Burton, B.S., Sulkes, D., Irvine, M., Grimes, C. , Determining the Impact of Physician Participation on Online CME Activities on the Health of Patients. CE Measures. 2008; 2(4): 68-73.
- Casebeer, L., Huber, C., Bennett, N., Shillman, R., Abdolrasulnia, M., Zhang, R. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Brief In-Office Counseling and Tailored Patient Education On Statin Adherence. BMC Fam Pract. 2009 Jun 30; 10:48.
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