Studies estimate that the adoption of health information technology (HIT) could produce efficiency and safety savings of $142 billion in U.S. physician offices and $371 billion in U.S. hospitals over the next 15 years. By implementing electronic health records, electronic ordering systems, decision support tools and handheld devices, U.S. healthcare providers can reduce healthcare spending and improve outcomes.

Thomson Healthcare recognizes that information and knowledge management tools are essential to improving clinical and financial performance. To leverage human, technological and clinical resources, health system executives need to choose solutions that will optimize resource use, drive revenue growth, control costs and improve clinical decisions. Thomson Healthcare decision support solutions empower healthcare executives and clinicians with the tools necessary to improve the quality of care while managing costs and operational efficiencies.

The Power of One

Thomson Healthcare is the single most powerful source for solutions that optimize clinical outcomes by identifying and minimizing errors, decreasing waste such as unnecessary tests and procedures, and increasing appropriate care while reducing treatment costs. A comprehensive suite of alerts, answers, protocols and interventions – covering drugs, disease, patient education, toxicology and laboratory information – provide robust clinical decision support for caregivers and patients.

Thomson Healthcare, made up of such leading brands as Micromedex, Medstat and MercuryMD, is the industry’s single most trusted provider of evidence-based clinical knowledge. Thomson Healthcare is the only business to offer a unified information repository underlying this knowledge base to ensure consistent and standardized knowledge delivery across the enterprise and at every point of care. Consistent clinical information that is integrated into staff work flow instead of being derived from multiple sources is a key driver for enabling informed, uniform decisions and driving best practices.

Armed with unmatched market intelligence, databases, software applications and analytic expertise, Thomson Healthcare is a trusted partner to healthcare decision makers. At Thomson Healthcare, we practice innovation as an imperative – because your business demands it.

Thomson Healthcare knowledge can be accessed in a variety of platforms to meet the expedient needs of clinicians: Internet, intranet, InfoButton technology, Web portals, hospital information systems, computerized physician order entry and mobile devices provide point-of-need access throughout the care continuum. All stakeholders benefit from standardized, consistent knowledge, including patients, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, students and other healthcare professionals.

Measuring Improvement and Performance

Measuring ROI and outcomes is an essential step in assessing IT expenditures for longterm provider investment and clinician usage. Such analysis is essential to both the clinical and business performance of the healthcare enterprise and hospital decision makers who determine the continuation of financial support based on the product’s value and revenue tied to targeted measures. Thomson’s performance management expertise, business management applications and data meet health systems’ critical information needs at every state of the business planning cycle. Thomson works with hospitals and health systems to identify the clinical outcomes, financial risk points and market conditions that impact the revenue cycle.

Comprehensive resources and tools support vital strategic and tactical business decisions related to growth planning, marketing, reimbursement, cost, return on investment and other financial performance metrics. As a result, providers are able to manage high-cost patients, renegotiate unprofitable contracts and uncover the work flow process compromising revenue collection. Clinical analyses reveal the physician practice patterns fueling excess cost and contributing to suboptimal care. Market intelligence tools integrate diverse data to produce consumer profiles of use, lifestyle and buying habits to help planners understand service demand and target growth.

Measure. Empower. Improve.

Thomson Healthcare’s integrated knowledge resources and performance measurement and improvement tools provide a powerful enterprise engine to deliver ondemand, actionable decision support coupled with the ability to measure results and implement improvements. Below is a sampling of these solutions:

• Provide evidence-based drug information in work flow, eliminating the incidence and costs of adverse drug events;
• Avoid inappropriate drug selection;
• Ensure appropriate medication administration; and
• Facilitate compliance with Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) and Institute of Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) guidelines.

• Deliver standardized, evidence-based care, localized to your institutional practices to improve outcomes, efficiencies, compliance and cost reduction efforts;
• Deliver comprehensive, current evidence-based, best practice patient management protocols;
• Establish quality guardrails and safety net for care planning;
• Support interpretation and management of results for unfamiliar laboratory tests; and
• Facilitate compliance with JCAHO and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) care guidelines.

• Deliver comprehensive and customizable information ensuring patients understand their condition and care and become active participants;
• Improve patient comprehension and identification of their medications and how to take them appropriately and monitor their effects;
• Engage consumer and patient community with healthcare organization as a trusted source of information; and
• Facilitate compliance with JCAHO patient education requirements.

Thomson Healthcare’s knowledge solutions offer proven results in:

• Identify profitable service growth opportunities ahead of the competition;
• Assess competitive position by service line and market to identify opportunities and threats; and
• Evaluate major investment decisions such as service location, facility expansion and technology purchase.

Enhanced Care Quality and Effectiveness

• Strengthen risk-adjusted clinical performance by highlighting specific areas for improvement;
• Enhance financial performance by addressing costly complications and practice variances;
• Improve patient safety through adverse event tracking and powerful root-cause analysis tools;
• Ensure timely, efficient and costeffective reporting to JCAHO, CMS, The Leapfrog Group and other data aggregators; and
• Understand the strategic implications of pay-for-performance initiatives.

• Ensure accurate payment of claims;
• Identify revenue cycle risk points and processes that prevent denied claims; and
• Facilitate the management and recovery of denied claims.

Building Partnerships for Global Success – This Still Works

Integration of Thomson Healthcare knowledge solutions into enterprise systems and applications is supported by partnerships with the top healthcare information system vendors. Thomson engages with vendors to integrate its clinical knowledge solutions within each enterprise’s key applications. These integrated solutions provide clinicians with point-of-care alerts and interventions that are both contextand patient-specific.

Thomson also collaborates with customers to simplify and streamline the implementation experience from concept to realizing benefits. Every Thomson customer has access to full integration, implementation deployment and training services, thereby streamlining the path to return on investment.

In more than 7,000 hospitals in 90 countries, healthcare professionals rely on Thomson for the most trusted, up-to-date and reliable clinical knowledge solutions. Thomson Healthcare draws on the substantial resources of the Thomson Corporation, an $8.4 billion corporation, with the vision to be the global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers for more than 150 years.

World-Class Evidence-Based Clinical Knowledge

Thomson Healthcare has been employing insights gleaned from guiding industryleading clinical decision support initiatives to evolve into a premier provider of clinical knowledge solutions for healthcare organizations. Supporting this evolution are major enhancements in how Thomson creates and delivers clinical content and supports its deployment. These include:

• Refined and documented editorial practices, leveraging clinical writers, editors, medical librarians and advisory boards;
• Continuous review, analysis and synthesis of medical literature, evidence and peer-reviewed research literature is supplemented with authoritative clinical practice guidelines, expert opinion and the perspective of clinical practitioners to provide evidencebased, practical and authoritative answers and recommendations;
• Grading of both the quality of evidence and the strength of major clinical recommendations adds additional support for implementing evidencebased medical practices;
• Rapid, accurate turnaround from publication of new, practice-changing studies and events to incorporate in Thomson content; process is evolving toward real-time updating and dissemination; and
• A leading-edge, enterprise-class technology infrastructure facilitates development of standards-based, patient-oriented content that is clinically consistent, internally integrated and granular.

The Development Process – This Still Works

More than 100 full-time clinical staff members, including physicians, pharmacists, nurses and medical librarians, are involved in the multistep process to create and review the content in Thomson’s clinical knowledge solutions. Our clinicians are trained and experienced in a wide range of specialties including:

• Internal medicine
• Oncology
• Geriatrics
• Pediatrics
• Emergency medicine
• Toxicology
• Clinical pharmacokinetics
• Alternative medicine

Thomson’s editorial staff is also trained in the identification of relevant literature and accepted literature evaluation techniques that assess methodological rigor and appropriateness of statistical analyses, as well as clinical relevance. These literature evaluation skills, in conjunction with clinical judgment, are employed throughout the content creation and review process.

Our content facilitates the practice of evidence-based medicine whereby the clinician can identify best practices and choose the most appropriate treatment plan for each patient.

Step 1: Identification of Literature and Topics for Inclusion – Senior Thomson editorial staff consider many factors when selecting subjects for our clinical databases. Topics chosen for further research are based on ongoing review of the world’s medical journals, consumer requests, clinical judgment and recommendations, regulatory standards and compliance, national healthcare trends, FDA approvals, editorial board suggestions and policy changes in health and disease management for professional health organizations.

The foundation of our ongoing literature surveillance is an automated literature query designed and monitored by an internal medical library staff and senior editorial staff. Our literature evaluation process comprises three levels: surveillance, title and abstract analysis and fulltext analysis. This three-step approach supports objectives and systematic selection of the most important evidence-based research. Selected literature is prioritized and launched into our editorial work flow for content creation.

Step 2: Content Creation – Primary literature identified in Step 1 is forwarded to a clinical writer to further assess the appropriateness of inclusion in our databases. This additional assessment is again based on accepted literature evaluation techniques and includes an analysis of methodological rigor, application of statistics and clinical relevance. If deemed appropriate for inclusion, the information is summarized in our proprietary, state-of-the-art content management system. Clinical writers adhere to internal style guides, policies and procedures to create accurate, consistent content.

Step 3: Content Review – An internal senior clinical staff member reviews new content. The review assesses clinical accuracy and relevance as well as adherence to internal style guides, policies and procedures.

Content creation and review is an interactive process by which the reviewer provides feedback to the writer. Content may cycle through the creation and review process several times before moving to the next step. This promotes continuous learning and serves to ensure our content is of the highest quality. The chief medical officer is ultimately responsible for the content output by the editorial team. Our senior clinical staff and internal experts meet with the chief medical officer on a regular basis to validate content decisions and to ensure inter-rater reliability within the group.

Step 4: Advisory Board and Expert Review of Content – Certain off-label indications for drug therapy as well as topics in specialized disease and toxicology subject areas undergo additional review by a Thomson advisory board or an expert reviewer.

Step 5: Final Clinical Review and Promotion to Production – An internal senior clinical staff member performs a final review of the content, taking into account feedback received from the advisory board or expert review. Content is promoted to production and is available for release in Thomson clinical knowledge products.

Our editorial staff is dedicated to the integrity of our information. By verifying every detail, they ensure the content is accurate, up to date and clinically relevant. This scrutiny instills confidence in clinicians who know they can put their highest trust in Thomson clinical knowledge resources.