Physicians Practice - July/August 2008 - (Page 55)

THE POWER OF EMPOWERMENT Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, a health economist and management consultant, who serves as president of the healthcare IT consulting ﬁrm THINK-Health, stresses the importance of using an EMR to its fullest capacity. “You can spend all the money you want on [an EHR], but if you don’t implement it fully or teach people how to use it fully, that’s the secret of the sauce right there. You can’t buy an EHR without spending a lot of money and time on implementation,” she says. “It doesn’t work by itself. You’ve got to train people to use it and re-engineer your processes and your work ﬂow after you adopt it.” IT automation, Lamberts can cite positive outcomes backed up by actual data — not just a gut feeling. Average LDL cholesterol for all of his diabetes patients? Under 100 — not bad. “All of our providers have 50-plus percent of our diabetics with A1c under seven,” he continues, “and around 10 percent with A1c over nine.” Evans Medical Group understands that “if you use [your EMR] as a tool to redesign work ﬂow, then it will greatly improve things,” says Lamberts. You can also set, track, and achieve your patient-care improvement goals. For example, the practice decided to target patient vaccination rates for Pneumovax. The result? Patient compliance is now up to more than 90 percent. “Our practice outperforms most practices on quality measures by at least 50 percent, and we out earn most practices; we’re in the top 5 percent of income for primary care.” QUANTIFIABLE EVIDENCE Robert Lamberts, MD Do it right, though, and your EMR really can pay off. Evans Medical Group in Evans, Ga., adopted EMR technology 12 years ago. The project was championed by primary-care physician Robert Lamberts; the difference in the quality of care offered before and after implementation was marked. Pre-EMR, he says, “we had no mechanism to improve quality. We had a single record that may or may not have accurate info in it.” But today, he can say with full conﬁdence that “our practice outperforms most practices on quality measures by at least 50 percent, and we out earn most practices; we’re in the top 5 percent of income for primary care.” A long-time proponent and nationally known speaker on health WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM The only real obstacles to accomplishing whatever they want, says Lamberts, are time and resources. “It is hard when these things aren’t rewarded. If you don’t get paid more for doing a good job, there is no motivation. We feel like if we had ﬁnancial reward for reaching any speciﬁc goal clinically, we could do it.” PATIENTS ARE PART, TOO There’s one more player that must be included on the team — the patient. Truly effective EMR implementation — one that achieves better patient outcomes — comes only with physicianpatient teamwork. This means including regular, electronic, two-way communication as an essential component. “It ain’t just about the EHR,” Sarasohn-Kahn explains. “It’s about JULY/AUGUST 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 55 http://www.agileemr.com http://www.agileemr.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - July/August 2008

Physicians Practice - July/August 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Battle Royale in the EMR Market Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: Hire Right Noteworthy Cover Story: Healthcare Reform: Voting for Change Patient Relations: Dealing with Problem Patients The tech Doctor: Is Self-Service Medicine Inevitable? Technology: Do EMRs Make You a Better Doctor? The Guide Idealab: Cash-Only Care Still Works The Administrators Desk: Who’s in Charge? Ask The Experts What Went Wrong: ‘Why Our Great Idea Didn’t Work’ Coding Start It Up: How to Launch a Practice: Operations Partnership: Don't Let Partner Conflict Destroy Your Practice Appraisals: What’s Your Practice Worth? Getting Advice: How to Hire a Consultant Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - July/August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.