Cincinnati Children’s believes in and practices evidence-based decision making (EBDM) as a way to achieve the best, safest care for children. Patients, purchasers, regulators and others expect practice to be based on sound judgment and best evidence; however, the proportion of clinical practice that has a basis in published scientific research is lower than one would expect. And the time it takes to include evidence-based decision making into practice can take years.
With this in mind, Cincinnati Children’s designed a division within the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence to promote, support and spread EBDM to the point of care. The value of EBDM was recognized when the Board of Trustees incorporated evidence initiatives into the medical center’s strategic plan, making it our mission to be the leader in evidenced-based care locally, regionally and around the world.
How We Promote Evidence
Our evidence group has focused on several key processes and resources to support EBDM throughout the medical center:
- Rapid Evidence Adoption for Child Health: Horizon scanning, evidence synthesis, embedding evidence and measuring and spreading evidence adoption are used to close the gap between evidence generation or publication and use of the evidence in decision making at the point of care.
- Let Evidence Guide Every New Decision: We collaborated with groups from nursing (patient services), allied health (occupational therapy / physical therapy) and our medical research library to develop the LEGEND (Let Evidence Guide Every New Decision) system, standardizing EBDM education and evidence evaluation for the institution. This system includes tools and resources for proceeding through the evidence-evaluation process.
- Best evidence statements: We use best evidence statements (BESts) to improve recommendation development and streamlined evidence reviews to improve revision processes.
- Evidence-based guidelines: We develop and disseminate high-quality processes and products, primarily evidence-based guidelines (EBGs).
