Physical Therapists and Physical Therapist Assistants Invited to Florida West Central District Meeting

The University of South Florida School of Physical Therapy is hosting the West Central District Meeting on Saturday, January 15th from 11am to 5pm. Lunch is provided.

I will present the most recent material from my new book, Bulletproof Expert Systems: Clinical Decision Support for Physical Therapists in the Outpatient Setting. The book is in editing and is due out in hardcover on April 30th, 2010.

The format of the meeting will provide 5 hours continuing education from my material and 1 hour for the business meeting. Lunch will be served form 1 to 2pm.

The USF School of Physical Therapy is located here.

Our agenda will cover these five topics:

1. Medicare "Improvement Standard"
2. Accountable Care Organizations (ACO)
3. Clinical Decision Support systems (CDSs)
4. Treatment Based Classification (TBC)
5. Physical Therapist Decision Making

I anticipate that about 50% of the time (~2 hours) will be spent discussing and demonstrating the various decision rules (TBC and Medical Screening). What You Will Learn and the Objectives for this portion of the program are as follows:

What You Will Learn

1. What is the Bayesian approach to problem solving? How can we determine the prevalence of the condition in our patients? Which tests do we use to make the diagnosis?
2. How to use likelihood ratios to determine the value of clinical testing. What if the likelihood ratios are not published?
3. What is Treatment Based Classification (TBC) for physical therapy? What are some other types of classification in rehabilitation? Why do we need to classify our patients?
4. What are Clinical Prediction Rules (CPR) and how are they used to screen for pathology? Why should physical therapists screen for pathology?
5. How can electronic Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tools improve your productivity, improve your processes-of-care and improve your patient outcomes? How is Clinical Decision Support (CDS) different than an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)?
6. Will the use of TBC treatment algorithms lower healthcare costs?
7. Who is qualified to use TBC and CDS algorithms in the clinic? Can Physical Therapist Assistants apply these tests?
8. What proportion of your work should be algorithmic? What proportion of your work should be naturalistic?

Objectives

1. The learner will become familiar with probabilistic decision-making styles in physical therapy.
2. The learner will learn how to evaluate clinical tests and measures based on their diagnostic accuracy – can they rule-in or rule-out certain diagnoses.
3. The learner will become familiar with the hierarchy of evidence development and will learn when the clinical judgment of the physical therapist is necessary to apply decision rules.
4. The learner will be able to distinguish between the features of an electronic Clinical Decision Support system and an Electronic Medical Record.
5. The learner will become familiar with literature describing the impact of CDS systems on the process-of-care and patient outcomes.
6. The learner will become familiar with literature describing the development of TBC in physical therapy and CPR in medicine.

Since I am a practicing clinician I will try to provide "real world" clinical examples of how we use TBC within the bounds of the daily physical therapy productivity demands, Medicare compliance mandates and the new challenge of developing an electronic medical record.

I hope you can make it!