UpToDate Subscribers Validate Quality Impact, Leadership Position

Waltham, Mass. – (Jan. 29, 2013) – Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information for healthcare professionals and students, announced today that more than 9 out of 10 UpToDate^® users believe their use of the clinical decision support resource improves quality of care and leads to more efficient patient management. Responses from the more than 17,000 users who participated in the 2012 Subscriber Survey underscored the critical role UpToDate plays in improving care, preventing errors, increasing clinical efficiencies and reducing costs related to delays in diagnosis and treatment.

Conducted in the fourth quarter of 2012, the survey marked the end of a banner year for UpToDate that included significant product innovations, increased clinician support worldwide, and an expanded body of scientific research demonstrating the impact of UpToDate on care quality, safety and outcomes.

Survey Highlights

Nearly 95% of respondents said they trust UpToDate as their clinical information resource at the point of care, while 88% agreed that it led to more appropriate diagnostic testing and 81% said it helps prevent errors. In terms of efficiencies, UpToDate was a time-saver for 87% of respondents, with 46% indicating a savings of 1-3 hours per week in time spent researching treatment options.

Deployment of UpToDate has also produced greater benefits to the quality and safety of patient care than other IT initiatives. The majority of survey respondents (93%) ranked its impact as more important than those of EMRs, e-prescribing systems, CPOE and even patient safety materials.

UpToDate “is current, up-to-date, easy, factual, convenient and ever improving. You have accurate information that is backed with recent, high-quality, peer-reviewed data synthesized in a way that is easy to search, easy to find, easy to read and very applicable to patient care,” said Alberto R. Savoretti, M.D.

Adds Michael Patmas, M.D., chief medical officer, Woodland Health: “Here, it’s the norm to refer to UpToDate when a clinical question arises and it is part of our daily lexicon. Our thought leaders, specialists, and veterans are all champions and supporters of UpToDate. In fact, we conducted a survey to see what our actual usage is and found that 95% of our physicians say they’re using UpToDate.”

Studies Validate Subscriber Feedback

A number of recent studies support what Dr. Patmas has seen at Woodland. Researchers at Singapore’s National University Hospital found that use of UpToDate provided a satisfactory answer to clinical questions 75% of the time and led to changes in investigations, diagnosis or management 37% of the time. An earlier study by Harvard researchers found that adoption of UpToDate is associated with lower mortality rates, shorter lengths of stay and improved quality. Specifically, use of UpToDate is associated with saving 11,500 lives over a three-year period, 372,500 hospital days annually and improved performance for every condition on the Hospital Quality Alliance metrics.

Improving Care, Everywhere

On the global healthcare front, UpToDate’s mission to improve care everywhere continued through its partnership with Global Health Delivery by providing free subscriptions to clinicians in resource-limited settings. To date, the program has enabled more than 8,400 clinicians and medical educators in 130 institutions to provide quality care for more than 170,000 patients each month in 45 countries.

In a post to the private community for international donation program grant recipients on GHDonline.org, Dr. Milad Hanna, director of In His Image International in Egypt writes: “Currently our hospital is changing our hypertension treatment protocols based on UpToDate recommendations. The articles…discussing HTN [are] amazing [and include] all co-morbidities such as HTN with renal failure, COPD, IPF and asthma, [and] also with children. It is a great source for developing protocols, not only for HTN but other diseases.”

Unparalleled Clinical Content

By year’s end, subscribers averaged more than 18 million topic views per month and submitted 7,442 feedback items resulting in 1,503 editorial updates. Additionally, 12 extensive practice-changing updates were published, covering cardiovascular medicine, infectious diseases, oncology, pediatrics and gastroenterology among other topics.

“We are dedicated to providing clinicians worldwide with easy access to unparalleled clinical content they can trust to support their decisions at the point of care. It is gratifying to hear from our subscribers that we are achieving these goals,” said Dr. Denise Basow,
Vice President/General Manager and Editor-in-Chief, UpToDate at Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions. “But we are not content to rest upon our laurels. In the coming year, we will continue to invest in UpToDate and expand access to clinical workflow integrations, improve our ease-of-use, and speed time to recommendation for our clinician users who are busier than ever.”

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About UpToDate

UpToDate^® is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical knowledge system which clinicians trust to make the right point-of-care decisions. UpToDate’s more than 5,100 world-renowned physician authors, editors and peer reviewers use a rigorous editorial process to synthesize the most recent medical information into trusted, evidence-based recommendations that are proven to improve patient care and quality. More than 700,000 clinicians in 158 countries and almost 90% of academic medical centers in the U.S. rely on UpToDate, and more than 30 research studies confirm UpToDate’s widespread usage and association with improved patient care and hospital performance, including reduced length of stay, adverse complications and mortality.

UpToDate is part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry. Wolters Kluwer Health is part of Wolters Kluwer, a market-leading global information services company with 2011 annual revenues of €3.4 billion ($4.7 billion).