Clinician performance and prominence of diagnoses displayed by a clinical diagnostic decision support system.

Abstract

Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can impact both diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making, but physicians sometimes fail to heed the appropriate CDSS advice, or become influenced in a negative way by the CDSS. This study examined the relationships among clinicians' prior diagnostic accuracy, the performance of a diagnostic CDSS, and how the CDSS influenced the accuracy of the clinician's subsequent diagnoses. Results showed that (1) clinicians who already were considering the correct diagnosis prior to using the CDSS were more likely to get the CDSS to produce the correct diagnosis in a prominent position than those not considering it initially; (2) physicians are strongly anchored by their initial diagnoses prior to using the CDSS; and (3) changes in the clinicians' diagnoses after using the CDSS are related to presence or absence of the correct diagnosis in the top 10 diagnoses displayed by the CDSS.