An ever-increasing demand on evidence is characteristic for modern health care. For example, the Google search engine found 260 000 pages on the search term “evidence-based medicine” in the Web. What is it all about?

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an approach that promotes the integration of valid and applicable clinical and research-derived evidence in health care. The best available evidence, moderated by individual patient circumstances and preferences, is applied to improve the quality of clinical judgments. In the past, diagnostic and treatment procedures remained largely the same over time. Now the increasing number of scientific publications questioning the past approaches is rapidly changing many treatment strategies today. For example, bed rest was the method-of-choice in the treatment of acute low back pain (LBP) only a decade ago.

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Already now, many countries, e.g. UK and USA, have added a request to participate in ongoing education annually in the license to practice medicine. The overwhelming amount of information is already leading to a situation where many doctors act rather as information managers through scientific databases available on CD-ROM or the Internet, rather than as specialists relying on the tradition that was once learned decades ago. Not only the progress in medical knowledge demands medical professionals to develop. Patients also have an access to information that was not available until recently.

Achievements in science and clinical practice are reported in the media more often, and the access to Internet makes it possible for virtually anyone interested to obtain a “second opinion” on a selected procedure, for example. Quality control is another feature characteristic for the development of modern health care. An increasing number of hospitals and other treatment providers are building quality systems and obtaining quality certificates of diagnostic procedures from independent quality assurance institutions, for example.

One of the drivers behind all these trends is the increase of costs in health care simultaneously with no increase in the funding available from societies or insurance. It is likely that only treatments shown to be not only efficacious, but also cost-effective, will be paid by insurance and other sources of compensation in the future. This is putting a high pressure on the development of diagnostics and treatment especially for back pain, the treatment of which can not be justified on vital indications.

..::How DBC Copes with the Future Challenges

DBC has chosen the strategy to build the diagnostics and treatment methods on cumulating clinical and scientific evidence and quality control already years ago. Should we not be happy with the evident trends in medicine supporting our strategy?
We must not remain satisfied with the existing DBC concept, although it is producing excellent results with our patients and independent efficacy studies document the long-term results. The demand on keeping up with the latest knowledge and the increasing demand on cost-efficacy put a constant pressure on a continuous development at DBC also. We must be able respond to that challenge. Also, competition is increasing in the active rehabilitation market.

We at DBC international are confident on the ability of our chain to keep up with these developments for many reasons. The first is the excellent results with our patients. For the ongoing development, the unique network of universities and other research institutions provides us the latest information available already before it is published in the medical journals.
Also, the data collection from the clinic chain makes it possible to control quality and to develop the DBC method constantly and maintain the competitive edge. The quality control system at DBC is very convincing towards the payers and is certainly one of the key strengths in the concept.

We just have to make the doctors and payers in the working environment of each DBC unit aware of the key strengths of DBC. Therefore, we are putting more emphasis at DBC International not only in obtaining the latest knowledge in back and neck rehabilitation, but also in strengthening the communication towards the medical community and insurance industry with the help of international-level professionals on that field.

We at DBCI believe in a bright future. It will be fascinating to see the upcoming developments.

Simo Taimela
MD, Dr.Med.Sc.
CEO & Medical
DBC International

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