There are multiple theories for how to unify workflows, leadership structures, clinical systems and information technology when hospitals expand or merge. For NYU Langone Medical Center, the strategy is technology first.
NYU Langone recently expanded into Brooklyn after merging with Lutheran Medical Center. Nader Mherabi, senior vice president, vice dean and CIO of NYU Langone, says focusing on unifying expansions with the enterprise through technology first helps facilitate any following clinical integration. This, he says, is the health system's strategy for success.
"We put a lot of the technology in first so that it paves the roads, as they say, for much better integration of clinical programs," Mr. Mherabi says. "If I don't have an EHR platform or other common technology, it makes it very hard to implement programs across the institution."
NYU Lutheran Medical Center recently went live on its Epic EHR, which Mr. Mherabi says lays the foundation for future innovation and integration. Now that the technology infrastructure is largely in place, the hospital can look to implement other successful elements from NYU's technology journey, which includes being completely paperless — in February, HIMSS Analytics awarded NYU Langone its Stage 7 award on its EMR Adoption Model for both the inpatient and ambulatory settings, meaning the hospital no longer uses paper charts, according to HIMSS.
Now that NYU Langone has achieved its goal of becoming paperless, Mr. Mherabi has set his sights on more lofty aspirations. "What we try to do is much broader than paperless — it's becoming an e-hospital," he says.
A key part of this goal is removing barriers to healthcare that are administrative in nature.
"Our strategy is to remove all the barriers to access to care, where you can do all these administrative aspects of healthcare online with your mobile device and be able to get to the exam room efficiently," Mr. Mherabi says. "Our goal is to move us to a much more digital platform through mobile devices that is easy to access and is integrated."
For example, NYU Langone uses a palm scanner to identify patients, and the hospital allows patients to fill out consent forms and forms asking particular questions related to symptoms and conditions online prior to coming to the hospital.
The goal, according to Mr. Mherabi, is to scale these types of initiatives and innovations to the entire enterprise. He says many organizations do them in just certain pockets of the care experience, but he hopes such practices become widespread.
It's all related to improving patient care, patient satisfaction and access to care, Mr. Mherabi says. "Complaints from the patient side are, 'Why can I do everything else online?'" he says, referring to the convenience of other online services like ride hailing apps and online banking. "There's not a reason you cannot be doing all of this through your mobile device," he says.
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