Staying Up to Date With Patient Care Resources
How to Build an Effective Patient Care Strategy
June is Patient Care Month at Collaborating Docs. While the ways that we deliver care have been changing, one of the most important means of providing effective care is to stay up to date on symptoms, diagnoses, medications, and medical breakthroughs.
But staying current can be challenging!
This has become much easier in recent decades as go-to medical resources are better at giving you the details you need to treat and inform your patients. The digital revolution introduced a number of online medical resources to the healthcare community. I know I can’t live without certain apps and websites as I try to provide the best care for my patients.
So today I wanted to share a few digital resources – UpToDate, Epocrates, and VisualDx – that are vital to my patient care strategy.
Disclaimer: I’m not recommending or ranking any specific resource here, and I was not paid to provide my insight into these resources. The information is just meant to be informative. I hope it can help as you launch or build your own practice.
UpToDate
UpToDate has been around for 25+ years, providing evidence-based resources that support clinical decisions and inform your research. With UpToDate, you get the latest medical evidence, best practices, and diagnostic guidance in more than 25 medical specialties. There are multiple research studies that demonstrate improved outcomes based on the widespread use of UpToDate.
You have the ability to search for a specific disease and get everything there is to know about the disease in a well-organized format. Common presentations, differential diagnoses, diagnostic imaging, management, and follow-up therapy are a few of the different criteria that the application covers.
Though individual subscriptions can be costly, the value of UpToDate as a patient-centered resource is undeniable.
Epocrates
Epocrates is one of the oldest drug reference apps available today. It’s seen as essential to more than one million healthcare providers globally. According to several reviews, epocrates delivers the most current safety, diagnostic, and treatment information around.
The epocrates app is free to use, but there is a paid version that contains an ICD-10 code lookup, clinical treatment guidelines, and a diseases database with medical information on a broad range of conditions.
Drug information on Epocrates includes:
- Adult and pediatric dosing
- Contraindications/cautions
- Side effects
- Drug interactions
- Safety and monitoring recommendations
- Pharmacology
- Pill identification images
There is also a section on Black Box Warnings where an exclamation point will appear if the drug labeling contains a warning. And for those who want to offer alternative medications, you can find therapies that can be substituted for the specific drug you have searched.
VisualDx
VisualDx is a diagnostic clinical decision support tool that helps enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety using artificial intelligence.
VisualDx was developed to assist clinicians to assist with medical decision-making by providing peer-reviewed evidence-based information at the point of care. VisualDx started out as a dermatology reference guide but can now be used in just about every specialty.
Based on your patient’s chief concern, the app will guide you through building a differential diagnosis – you can even visualize variations of a disease.
Some features include:
- World’s best curated medical image library
- Leading skin of color atlas
- Smart search for chief complaints, diagnoses, and drug reactions
- Custom patient-specific differential diagnosis builder
Searches usually return a table of contents, patient handouts, and links to other resources – notably PubMed and UpToDate. You can even earn CMEs by using the platform!
So these resources provide a great start to staying up to date with patient care. With one or more of these tools at your fingertips, you’re able be as current as you can with treatment and patient education.
