The Evolving Provider – The Other Side

Jonena Relth,
President and Leadership Evangelist,
TBD Consulting, Inc.

When I sat down to write about this month’s topic, “The Evolving Provider,” I must admit that I felt some empathy for my physician friends because of all the changes that are happening around them.  Let’s be honest:  CHANGE SUCKS, especially for us ‘ol cronies!  Not only are they expected to diagnose and treat their patients, now they are expected to manage their practices in a whole new way with computers and Lean/Six Sigma processes.  Their chosen career to heal people is now embroiled in an environment which is pressured by government bureaucrats, IT gurus and business, OD and training consultants telling them how they should do their job.  And for all of this, physician incomes are decreasing and their medical malpractice insurance is skyrocketing.  It’s not a surprise that so many talented men and women are hanging up their white coats and retiring or becoming consultants!

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

Andrea Morgan, AndreaKnowsEMR.com

As clinical environments become more imbued with technology, there is a constant need to evolve and grow. Changing capabilities and opportunities, the availability of information and the necessity to incorporate components in medical decision making that might not have been around 10 years ago necessitates the evolution of providers.

Most providers will agree that they want to care for patients, document appropriately, bill confidently and have a smooth transition from paper to electronic medical records. Having a plan in mind, such as the one outlined here, will go along way toward meeting the objectives listed above.

1. Practice overview
2. Role definition
3. Current state workflow defined
4. Validation
5. Future state workflow
6. Design,build, validate
7. User acceptance testing
8. Training
9. Build for production
10. Go-live support
11. Post go-live support can be provided by:
    ○ Phone
    ○ Email
    ○ Newsletter/tips and tricks
12. Refresher training
13. On-going needs for training:
    ○ Optimization
    ○ New hire training
    ○ Software updates

In an ongoing series, each of these steps will be discussed in turn. Let’s take a look at Step 1, The Practice Overview.

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

Also join our LinkedIn group EMR/EHR Clinical Transformation. Engage in discussion with nearly 3,000 professionals. This group is for physicians, health informatics and medical professionals, IT and performance improvement professionals. Join this group if you wish to learn from peers, get up-to-date news feeds, and share best practices for implementing EMR/EHR systems to equip clinical staff with the skills necessary to make the transition from paper to paper-light electronic records.

EMR or EHR Implementation Success Requires Business Acumen

Jonena Relth,
President and Leadership Evangelist,
TBD Consulting, Inc.

Equally important to providing well-designed training is making sure people are ready for the changes they will encounter with a major system implementation such as EHR or EMR. And of course, whoever leading these initiatives should be trained and practicing effective business acumen.

I don’t want to insult anyone reading this, but lately I’ve been amazed to learn that many healthcare leaders are not trained nor do they understand business acumen when it comes to running a medical facility. Here’s a definition:

“Business acumen development is a method used to show how actions and behavior can impact financial decisions and affect financial outcomes at the unit and corporate level. It stresses the links between behavior and financial outcomes and shows how training and development in this area can improve the performance of a manager and bottom-line results of a particular unit or the corporation.”

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

When one discusses business acumen, it is usually applied to individuals. What I plan to discuss is the business acumen that hospital administrators should have when considering implementation of IT and mHealth technologies.

It is well known that one of the biggest priorities of hospital administrators today is implementing IT technologies that will have their institutions meet Meaningful Use (MU) standards. The most important step in this process in my view is having the right Chief Information Officer (CIO) in place. Many hospitals did not invest or invest wisely in CIOs. Good ones are now hard to find. There are presently hospitals that are actually outsourcing this position. The job is taking on increasing importance, not only because of the focus on MU, but because of the role of the CIO in implementing even more complex projects including wireless technologies and strengthening IT security (a daily headline grabber). Along with the CIO are other IT employees. Many IT workers wanting to get into healthcare are getting formally trained but are being turned away while being told they do not have enough clinical experience. These people might thrive under the right administrator and support.

Good business acumen is always planning for the future.

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

Also join our LinkedIn group EMR/EHR Clinical Transformation. Engage in discussion with nearly 3,000 professionals. This group is for physicians, health informatics and medical professionals, IT and performance improvement professionals. Join this group if you wish to learn from peers, get up-to-date news feeds, and share best practices for implementing EMR/EHR systems to equip clinical staff with the skills necessary to make the transition from paper to paper-light electronic records.

Which is more important: Education, Training or Teaching?

Jonena Relth,
President and Leadership Evangelist, TBD Consulting, Inc.

Question # 1: What do you consider most important to your organization:

1. Users’ ability to efficiently and properly use ERP, EMR or EHR software,OR
2. The quality of the training used to ensure the users can efficiency and properly use ERP, EMR or EHR software.

Naturally, most people will choose #1 as most important. However, why is it that we desire people to be able to do their jobs, but we are often unwilling to provide them the additional “training” necessary for them to do just that? Unfortunately, the answer is most often: leaders simply don’t value training. They see it as a means to an end…nothing more…nothing less.

Question #2: On a scale of 1-5 (5 being high), how often does your organization budget customized training as a priority line item for new software implementations?

I hope you were able to answer “5,” but my experience as a training consultant for 20 years of asking my clients this question is that they usually answer “1″ or “2.”

And please before you start stop reading: Yes, of course we need college and post-grad educated employees who have learned the healthcare knowledge required for their chosen profession. I’m not negating college education in any way. What I’m asking is, “Why do we consider training our medical professionals on other, non-medical topics they need to know as less important when it comes to budgeting?” Yep, this seems to be a finance issue, in my way of thinking.

In healthcare, we highly value education, as we should, but… we often fail to see the similarities in the three “terms” after our employees are on board.

READ COMPLETE ARTICLE

The patient portal is a small part of electronic health records (EHRs) in Stage 1 of Meaningful Use (MU) and becomes more significant in the subsequent stages. It is, in my opinion, going to be pivotal in ultimately determining the degree of success of the adoption of EHRs. The patient health record (PHR) is the window of the patient to the EHR. It can be as simple as offering the patient a look at the medical history, diagnoses and medications (which itself may be useful in the patient identifying errors), or patient management tools via mobile health platforms which interact with the EHR.

Mobile health technologies will ultimately become an integral part of healthcare delivery. These apps will need to have seamless connectivity with the EHR and it would make sense to do this via the patient portal as the wireless technology will communicate information from or near the patient. The information gleaned from the mHealth apps will only be as good as the interoperability with the PHR and other aspects of the EHR (diagnoses, medication, and potentially other mHealth apps).

The EHR is meant to be a secure set of information fluid and all encompassing with regards to the health record. The key to the word ‘meaningful’ of Meaningful Use, the government’s requirements for EHRs, is paramount to its ultimate success. The ability to synthesize data from various providers, diagnostic testing facilities, government agencies, payers, pharmacies and others, theoretically decreasing duplicate test rates, and improving outcomes because of shared information and safety features such as drug-drug interaction programs. However, the use of mHealth technologies was not specifically included in the plan that the designers of MU had.

Also join our LinkedIn group EMR/EHR Clinical Transformation. Engage in discussion with more than 2,600 professionals. This group is for physicians, health informatics and medical professionals, IT and performance improvement professionals. Join this group if you wish to learn from peers, get up-to-date news feeds, and share best practices for implementing EMR/EHR systems to equip clinical staff with the skills necessary to make the transition from paper to paper-light electronic records.