It's time for an annual rite of spring. Now is when we cut through the clutter, put things in order and gain the ease of mind and effectiveness that comes with a clean slate and a clean surrounding.
But your home isn't the only place that calls for a thorough spring cleaning. Now is also a great time to freshen up your EHR and make sure you're getting as much out of it as possible.
With many hospitals now in their second year of the third stage of meaningful use, where electronic health records lead to improved patient outcomes, it can be tempting to view the EHR as a checked box, a completed item on the perennial "to-do" list. After all, you deployed the system successfully. And more importantly, the physicians, nurses and ancillary staff members at your hospital seem relatively content with it. In fact, the EHR system is working just fine.
Not so fast. As any homeowner will attest, even the finest castle requires maintenance. And as with a home after a winter of use, your EHR will most likely benefit from a thorough spring cleaning a freshening up that not only ensures that it's in tip top shape, but also reminds you why you built it to begin with and what you want to get out of it.
The EHR of course is many things to many people. To CIOs and information technology departments, it's a complex ever-changing system that requires continual vigilance. To those engaged in operational and business functions, it's a singular element of compliance and a catalyst for greater efficiencies and more cost-effective care. And for clinicians it's a powerful tool, one that enables those on the front lines to make important decisions with surety.
In fact, a well-maintained (and dare we say well-loved) EHR is all of these things. And like a home, it's a significant investment, the full value of which can only be realized through the constant attention of its owners. So what can these EHR owners the physicians, nurses, IT professionals, operational teams and professionals overseeing myriad business functions do to ensure that their EHR is in great shape? With more than 50 years of combined service to hospitals, we've come up with seven core questions to guide your EHR spring cleaning efforts so you can reap the rewards this summer and beyond:
• Are staff receiving on going relevant EHR training? It's widely accepted that no one should ever be expected to use the EHR without training, but a commitment to ongoing instruction is equally imperative as workflows change, upgrades happen, new functionality is introduced, etc. Training should also extend beyond an overview of features and functionality and include real-world scenarios, workflows and procedures. It's also important to remember that many physicians have admissions privileges with numerous hospitals that use different EHRs. Proficiency with one EHR does not mean familiarity with another.
• Do clinicians and ancillary staff have the support they need in other words, do you have an effective help desk in place? Clinicians should never be expected to trouble shoot an EHR system any more than they would be expected to work on an MRI machine. And as any computer user knows, even a simple IT or application-related question can consume hours of productivity when you have to find an answer on your own. The help desk should be able to provide knowledgeable assistance on workflows, processes and features and functionality whenever the EHR is being used.
• Are templates within the EHR consistent with the needs of today's clinicians? In an acute or ambulatory environment, templates can be used to efficiently capture and communicate information to the entire care team. They also save time so care providers can focus more time on patients whose symptoms fall outside of the norm. The EHR works best when hospitals and practices strike a delicate balance between templates and free-text capabilities that empower clinicians to capture and record unique information at their discretion. Finding this balance requires the collaboration of cross functional teams from business and operations, IT and clinical care.
• Is the EHR adequately maintained with the latest patches and updates? As in any setting that relies on IT, effective application management, including robust testing, is absolutely crucial to ensure the security, reliability and effective usage of the EHR system. When one considers the cost for the sake of example, one vulnerability that stems from a missed patch or upgrade can put all of the hospital's information at risk the need to have such best practices in place is readily apparent.
• Are you using EHR data to continually improve? The delivery of care and the use of the EHR results in data that can be viewed in reports and dashboards, analyzed, and acted upon. When parsed correctly, this information serves as a powerful indicator of what's going well and what's not providing leadership with a valuable roadmap of where and how to improve. If operational and quality leaders aren't using this data to identify and prioritize where opportunities for improvement lie in the organization's approach to processes, technology and care, they are missing a significant opportunity to realize the full potential of the EHR.
• Are you using your EHR to share information across your community? It's no secret that the information in EHRs is of great value for population health; however, to gain a comprehensive view of patients, and to more efficiently and effectively manage and coordinate care, requires the integration of the EHR system with other applications and technologies. For example, prescribing physicians ideally will know when a patient isn't picking up their prescription drugs because they can't afford them. Details captured in ancillary systems and various EHRs used by hospitals, hospital networks, payers, pharmacies, mental health professionals, health information exchanges and government agencies are often highly relevant to meaningful clinical decision-making and the entire extended care team should have viability.
• Are you using your EHR to fully engage your patients in their own care?
Patients of all ages increasingly want to manage their care and interactions with providers, hospitals, and other healthcare entities. Today's intuitive portals enable hospitals to provide not only a self-service platform that reflects this preference, but also one that empowers patients to interactively communicate with providers, dynamically schedule services and appointments, expeditiously review results, attain individualized education, and access additional information such as price quotes for services on-demand. When properly integrated with the EHR, patient portals with these capabilities and others can help hospitals strengthen patient engagement, ensure better adherence to treatment regimens and increase loyalty all while gaining even greater value out of the EHR.
With the intent to freshen things up and by asking these questions, hospital leaders can ensure that their investment in EHR not only addresses business imperatives, including compliance and regulatory issues, but also has the desired effect of simultaneously improving clinical care. What's more, by fully drawing on the data analytics and reporting capabilities inherent in today's increasingly robust EHRs, hospital leaders can meaningfully impact population health and the coordination of community-wide care. And that's an outcome hospitals and hospital networks can look forward to in any season.
###
A licensed registered nurse, Helen Bremford has more than 27 years of experience in clinical care, clinical informatics and in the deployment and fine tuning of healthcare IT systems. Gary Mann has more than two decades of experience helping global enterprises and healthcare organizations effectively manage the increasingly complex ecosystem of applications, systems and networks on which they depend.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.