Technology is everywhere today—in our homes, our offices, our pockets—enhancing our lives in ways big and small. The same is true of healthcare institutions, which are investing heavily in electronic health records (EHR), voice recognition technology, documentation storage solutions, claims management tools, reporting and analytics platforms, and more.

All of this tech in healthcare, however, is vastly underused. Just like how we may walk around with a professional-grade camera on our phone but never take a decent photo, employees in healthcare organizations are not making the best use of their technology.

How healthcare organizations are underutilizing Epic EHR

After working with healthcare applications for almost 30 years, I can say that many healthcare organizations have a lot of untapped potential in their current tool sets. A good example of this is Epic EHR, which is a very widely used—and underutilized— tool in healthcare institutions.

There are several areas in which healthcare institutions are short-changing their use of Epic:

• Patient engagement: Epic comes equipped with the MyChart patient engagement tool, which has frequent enhancements. While most organizations are familiar with MyChart, their knowledge of what it can do is often outdated. For example, most of MyChart’s features—such as scheduling, electronic check-in, queuing, automatic waitlists, electronic questionnaires, and integration with location services and telehealth visits—are now available to users without a MyChart account. This open accessibility makes the tool much more powerful, but only if healthcare organizations know how to use it in the most robust way.

• Population health and value-based care: Epic also comes equipped with population health and value-based care tools such as preventive care protocol orders, care management options, eligibility feeds, appropriate diagnosis guidance, and analytics. But without a solid understanding of these capabilities and how to use them, care teams can’t take advantage of all Epic has to offer. This often leads to manual workarounds or multiple tools, which add costs and technical complexity.

• Billing automation: The same goes for billing automation tools. Billing automation has been a major focus area for Epic and other revenue cycle vendors, which put out changes with almost every release. These updates are designed to make it easier for staff to understand the billing process and for patients to understand their bill, yet providers still often don’t use these options to their full potential. While accurate and timely billing has always been key, healthcare organizations also have to be a lot smarter about the tools they use to support the billing process.

EHRs and other core healthcare applications are always adding new features and improving the existing ones, yet healthcare organizations—lacking knowledge about the latest capabilities— are often too quick to seek new tools to perform tasks that existing tools could handle.

Such duplication is like a homeowner buying a top-of-the-line stove with an air fry setting and then purchasing a countertop air fryer because they don’t realize the stove comes equipped with this function (or don’t feel like bothering to learn how to use it).

How to make the best use of your health IT

Below are recommendations for how healthcare institutions can keep current with their core products and get the most out of their health IT investments.

• Meet regularly with vendors to understand future direction and share top priorities.

• Schedule times when operational teams can view the product direction and give feedback (preferably in line with budget cycles).

• At least annually, develop formal roadmaps based on the product direction and core organizational goals.

• Set planned release cycles well in advance—a common practice in development shops but less common for standard healthcare vendor applications.

• Have a process for collecting information about how people use the tools and what they need, which can guide the release process and inform/influence vendors.

There is a time and place to add new vendors to meet specific needs, but now more than ever—with financial resources strained across the healthcare sector—we owe it to our organizations to get the most out of the significant investments they’ve already made.

Providers should embrace the discipline of understanding their tools and build roadmaps for discovery, enhancement, and usage to get the best out of the tools they own and avoid duplication in their health IT investments.

Should healthcare institutions upgrade their tech? Q&A with two experts

Many hospitals and health systems are leaning on yesterday’s technology to meet today’s demands. An attitude of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” can leave healthcare institutions with outdated technology stacks and an overwhelming feeling about how to upgrade effectively.

We spoke to Tabitha Lieberman, President, EHR and Healthcare Applications, and Michelle Strawn, Vice President, EHR and Healthcare Applications, to get their take on how healthcare providers can assess the right time to upgrade and approach this potentially daunting process.

Should all healthcare institutions upgrade their technology tools?

Tabitha: Consider where the healthcare industry is right now. We’re dealing with decreasing revenue, mounting costs, increased complexities, and higher-than-ever physician burnout. The more we can utilize technologies to assist the better.

At the same time, though, we’re also not in a position to keep adding millions of dollars worth of tools—so you need to make sure your team is getting the most out of your existing technology investments. That not only helps you save money, but it also addresses a portion of these systemic issues we’re facing. We owe it to our providers and patients to understand what tools we have and what benefits these tools provide, for a minimal increase in costs.

Michelle: I think KPIs can be used in the revenue cycle space to ask, “Where do we come in compared to our peers? And what’s the cost to deliver that service? Are we getting our biggest bang for our buck?” And I think we need to ask ourselves, “Is it helping solve the problems that we face in healthcare? And if it’s not, then what are we doing?” Sometimes I feel like we spend a lot of time on a cool tool, but if it’s not helping the patient or helping the healthcare organization deliver care in a better way, then what’s the value? You’ve got to have a reason that you’re investing in it.

Tabitha: Very few organizations use all of the functionality available in their existing systems. When you’re behind in revenue or when your nurses are frustrated, do you layer on another tool? Or do you sit down and say, “What tools do I already have to improve the experience and outcomes?” Epic is utilized in small and large organizations, but I guarantee that very few organizations have fully exploited it. I just met with someone who told me that they haven’t done a technology tune-up in over 10 years. They’re a good organization and they’ve applied timely upgrades, but they haven’t gone back and looked at some of the foundational items needed to take the system to the next level.

How should organizations think about their tech tools?

Michelle: You’ve made this significant financial investment in your EMR, so you want to constantly be looking at where to leverage that. But it gets tricky because you implement the tool, and then you move on to the next project. And you’re not reevaluating and constantly asking, “Does the tool still meet our needs? How can we optimize it? How can we fine-tune it?” You need to take advantage of the technology that you’ve invested in to the best of its capabilities.

Tabitha: We constantly hear that new technologies are so much better. They’re modern, they’re in the cloud, they’re automated, and they have AI. While this all sounds good, the reality is that there’s no magic fix. It’s a hard discipline for many organizations to understand their needs, learn what their applications can do, and only augment with new tools when they have taken advantage of what they already own. That requires governance, financial discipline, and operations-friendly technology roadmaps.

Michelle: Many organizations have tools that can help them. But they have to sit down and expend energy on how to apply them and how to use the tools in the tool bag to actually make improvements. It can be hard, but also look at the ROI—meaning that by really understanding your tools and the value they are bringing you. Organizations can’t afford right now to just go out and buy everything, so let’s use what we have and drive improvement.

Do you think you’re leaning on yesterday’s tech to meet today’s demands? Is it time to upgrade or figure out how to get the most out of what you have? Let’s talk! Contact us at info@brightworkconsulting.net to learn how we can help.