Healthcare providers want to integrate clinical decision support (CDS) into their workflow, but they are finding that it’s not so easy, according to a report from research firm KLAS.

While providers are expecting third-party vendors to keep pace with clinical evidence, many struggle to embed that content into their EMR and clinical workflow, the research shows.

Among the information most likely to impact care are order sets, care plans and drug databases.

[See also: AMIA: Regenstrief pumps up its clinical decision support.]

Those items have the potential to impact care for every patient and are the bedrocks of CDS for many organizations, according to the KLAS report, "Clinical Decision Support 2012: Order Sets, Care Plans, Drug Databases."

"The focus of this report is what vendors are doing to address the challenges that providers have to stay current with a growing body of clinical evidence and then using it to affect decisions at the point of care," says report author Coray Tate. "Order sets, care plans, and drug databases clearly play important roles in what healthcare reform is trying to accomplish. Realizing their benefit requires coordinated efforts from CDS and EMR vendors and, most importantly, determination on the part of providers.”

[See also: Study: Clinical decision support reduces unnecessary imaging.]

The study looks at how the three separate types of CDS tools interact with providers’ EMRs. It compares third-party vendors’ performance as well as the contributions of the different EMR solutions. Care plan and order set vendors include Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, and Zynx Health. Drug database vendors include Cerner Multum, First Databank, and Wolters Kluwer Medi-Span.

KLAS interviewed 249 providers for the report, and more than half of the providers using third-party tools indicated they were frustrated with integration problems, according to the report.

Researchers found that providers increasingly are using home-grown and third-party clinical decision support tools to keep up with clinical evidence, but that content overload and operational difficulties are creating barriers to effective use.