Improving prognosis for better care

Send us Fan MailAccurate diagnosis and prognosis are crucial in determining a patient’s plan of care. Many look at a prognosis as an “event” – a moment in time when a prediction about a patient’s illness trajectory is made – when it’s really an ongoing process that typically changes over time.Especially because of these changing dynamics, how can clinicians be more accurate about prognoses? Christian Sinclair, MD, AAHPM, provides intriguing information and considerations about the impact of prognoses – particularly on hospice and palliative care – and offers suggestions on improving prognoses going forward.In this conversation with host Stan Massey of Transcend, Dr. Sinclair discusses some of the challenging factors that go into making a highly accurate prognosis. He also talks about the need for unified research and prediction technology present in other businesses to be applied in improving the accuracy of clinical prognoses. In addition, the discussion explores the role of big data in the future of prognoses, along with the importance for clinicians to apply more tangible metrics to their observations.Dr. Sinclair is Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at University of Kansas Medical Center. He is the organizer of a popular weekly TweetChat on hospice and palliative care (#hpm), as well as editor-in-chief of Pallimed, a widely read hospice and palliative medicine blog. His deep expertise and passion for hospice and palliative medicine makes listening to this episode time well invested.