Healthcare It News - February 2008 - (Page 74)

74 Healthcare IT News February 2008 ■ management solutions www.HealthcareITNews.com ERPs bring harmonic convergence to healthcare e By John Andrews, Contributing Writer NTERPRISE RESOURCE Planning systems are gaining more exposure within the hospital operations segment, ascending beyond traditional business functions into a sophisticated data management realm. ERP vendors contend that the latest generations of their products can assume practically all administrative, operations and supply chain computing tasks currently served by separate, parochial modules. gaining ground Among the most visible players in the ERP domain is Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle. Mary Kilmer, national executive director of Oracle’s Healthcare Industry Business Unit, explains that ERP covers most areas outside of direct patient care, such as human resources, payroll, procurement and financial services other than patient billing. Although ERP systems have had an organization-wide operating capability for a number of years, Kilmer says they are becoming more prominent now because an increasing number of hospitals are realizing the need to substantially upgrade their information technology. “The market is mature enough now that many first-generation business packages are at a point where they aren’t meeting the hospital’s needs,” she said. “The systems have aged, the organization has grown, they’ve been acquired or they just need more functionality.” Segregated systems are part of the hospital’s “traditionally fragmented way of doing business,” Kilmer said. Gradually, though, she said administrators are realizing the value of integrating all of the organization’s business functions to support healthcare’s four basic tenets: quality, cost, service and access. “It’s clear that healthcare’s understanding of IT has grown tremendously, recognizing the need for integrated systems – enterprise partnerships for enhanced reporting and workflow,” she said. “What’s exciting is that the industry is craving systems that can do all that.” Oracle’s two main products have multiple levels of reporting and still another level of reporting that sits on top of applications to create a system-wide transparency for reviewing results. “The organization can look at the origin of a number, a set of data and change it to see its implications,” Kilmer said. “It’s the powerful ability to take clinical information from another system and marry it with operational and administrative data.” Enterprise Resource Planning systems are helping hospitals organize their administrative, operations and supply chain computing tasks, giving hospitals a better handle on the business side of things so they can concentrate on providing quality healthcare. “there is a much tighter coupling between hospital operations and patient care processes and how that can be measured in a financial way. there is a much more intelligent layer of software spanning all those functions.” – Marc Holland Mass.-based Health Industry Insights, considers the core ERP application to include purchasing, inventory management, distribution, charge back, general ledger, accounts payable and payroll. He says new ERP systems are more focused on integrating financial management and patient care functions in order to formulate strategic correlations. “There is a much tighter coupling between hospital operations and patient care processes and how that can be measured in a financial way,” Holland said. “There is a much more intelligent layer of software spanning all those functions. Data warehousing goes on top of financial reporting, bringing in data from other applications, allowing for analysis of patient stays and use of materials to forecast labor requirements.” Healthcare organizations are looking to get more value out of their data and ERP systems specialize in future projections rather than analyzing recent experience, Holland said. “Along with clinical systems, that’s where the attention has turned,” he said. “The more complex hospital management becomes, the more important it is to go back and revisit the decisions that were made years before – it can lead to new layers and enhancement, and over time will lead to yet another replacement cycle.” Holland collated hospital IT expenditures into four basic categories: brand-new firsttime system purchases, minor enhancements to existing systems, significant enhancements to existing systems and replacement of systems. “Over time the percentage shifts, but none of the four ever go away,” he said. “The more hospitals invest the more they realize they need to invest and this rate of investment will only increase.” true value The ERP system’s true value comes from its ability to condense business processes “into a single view,” said Laura Mooney, senior director of product and corporate marketing for Baltimore-based Metastorm. “Everyone has one view of the data and a single interface for all the different processes, rather than logging onto multiple systems,” she said. “It’s more flexible in terms of changing and adapting processes, which is critical because hospitals are facing an increased level of regulation and compliance. Regulations are coming from all angles, depending on your perspective.” Over the past two years, Metastorm shifted its product emphasis from automation and execution of business management to analysis of processes and strategic modeling so that organizations have a better understanding of how all their pieces fit under one umbrella, Mooney said. “From a customer perspective, we’re seeing a lot of maturing and better understanding of having a focused business process improvement initiative,” she said. “Their business process management and ERP systems, historically separate, are now coming together.” ■ More at healthcareITnews.com e Connect: erP 0208 core applications Marc Holland, program director for healthcare provider research at Framingham, ● Allscripts looks to Hawaii for P4P reporting solution By erIC wICklund, Managing Editor Allscripts is teaming up with a Hawaii-based physician management services organization on a new product designed to ease pay-for-performance reporting guidelines for physicians. The Chicago-based provider of clinical software, connectivity and information solutions has unveiled the Allscripts Clinical Quality Solution (CQS), which CHICAGO – extracts and compiles appropriate quality measures from an electronic health record (EHR), practice management (PM) system or outside laboratories. CQS then helps clinicians identify patients eligible for specific pay-for-performance programs, locates the appropriate reporting codes and automatically updates that information. CQS is powered by TeamPraxis, a physician management services organization that provides technology and support services to more than 1,000 physicians in Hawaii. Allscripts will integrate CQS into its EHR and PM solutions. “Physicians today would like to take advantage of the growing number of pay-for-performance initiatives that promise to deliver new income for their practices, but many are discouraged by the time-consuming paperwork required to participate in the program,” said Glenn Tullman, Allscripts’ CEO. Aside from streamlining the reporting process, CQS is also designed to give physicians quick access to relevant patient information. Through a physician dashboard, physicians can drill down to specific patients and take such steps as scheduling follow-up appointments or lab tests. More at healthcareITnews.com e Connect: CQS 0208 ● http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8656 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8657

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Healthcare It News - February 2008 Contents Hot Potato Wal-Mart Focus CIO Role Wasteland Linking Docs Katrina Work P4P Team Fire Sale? Emergency Systems Beyond Business

Healthcare It News - February 2008

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