Healthcare IT News - May 2008 - (Page 33)

www.HealthcareITNews.com management solutions May 2008 ■ Healthcare IT News 33 Measuring outcomes isn’t that simple ment. Medical College of Wisconsin/St. is no more ambitious Joseph’s Family Medicine Residency received (and elusive) goal in healthcare than the 2008 Microsoft Healthcare User’s Group successfully measuring outcomes. The (MS-HUG) Health Innovation Award for concept has been discussed for years, yet “disease surveillance” due to its creative data extraction and deployment methods. progress has largely been stagnant. Basically, everything hinges on the EMR, Now that quality initiatives like pay-forperformance (P4P) and value-based purchas- said Program Administrator Sandy Olsen. “The real power of the EMR is to get the ing are being promulgated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and information to take care of patients,” she Congress, the need for providers to establish said. “A lot of organizations have EMRs, but they are not mining effective outcomes “a lot of organizations it to improve patient programs is moving care. The reasons toward urgent. Prohave emRs, but may be that many viders no longer have theY aRe not mining EMR products don’t the luxury of open(them) to imPRoVe have reporting capaended deliberation bilities or that while – the time has come Patient CaRe. the reasons they have the EMR for action, industry may be that many emR up and running observers say. products don’t have they’re not comfortIf outcomes meareporting capabilities or able with taking it to sure quality indicathe next level. It isn’t tors, does it begin with that while they have the real easy to do.” clinical performance? emR up and running, they’re The EMR gives Customer service? not comfortable with taking providers the ability Financial manageit to the next level.” to clinically manage ment? Authorities their patient popusay there are various – Sandy Olsen lations, whether it ways to approach the outcomes issue and that, ultimately, provid- involves child immunizations or chronic ers will have to provide concrete evidence conditions like diabetes. “We started to identify where we could of their clinical efficacy, patient satisfaction levels and financial effectiveness in order to make a difference and once we got to that point, we started looking at areas where we receive sufficient payment for services. Electronic health records are being touted could make the greatest impact,” Olsen said. as the catalyst for all of these quality indi- “We couldn’t have done it without physician cators because they store and synthesize and nurse champions – they are the ones the reams of data used in outcomes mea- doing the work and they are the ones who surement. Ironically though, installing and are making sure things move ahead.” Physician champion Robin Helm, MD, deploying these EHR systems can require their own outcomes algorithm, said Janie said she and her clinical staff signed on to the Tremlett, senior vice president and chief EMR project because “it seemed like a natural marketing officer for North Chelmsford, extension for us.” Working as a team to build templates and documents fostered a greater Mass.-based Concordant. “There has been a burst of EHR deployments going on and it was common for early adopters – those who received P4P dollars to get their EHRs started – to grossly underestimate their costs,” she said. “They blew through their dollars because they underestimated their total cost of ownership.” Consequently, total cost of ownership has become an outcome in and of itself. Last year, Concordant embarked on a mission to develop service and competitive models specifically for the ambulatory environment, which Tremlett says is “very different from acute care.” They developed what they consider to be a comprehensive model that ranges from planning to ongoing support. It establishes a five-year time frame for determining the total cost of ownership, creating the ability for clients to gauge and adjust to variables and ascertaining costs. “The goal was to take the complexity of implementation and product-ize it in a way so that people responsible could understand the critical decisions that need to be made with regard to costs,” Tremlett said. “It involves understanding the decisions they need to make today and what it is really going to cost so people can prepare and successfully finance the implementation.” By John Andrews, Contributing Writer P ERHAPS THERE James G. Slawson, MD, left, and Jennifer Ovide, RN, review patient records on the NextGen EMR 2000 platform at the Medical College of Wisconsin/St. Joseph’s Family Medicine Residency. The facility received the 2008 Microsoft Healthcare User’s Group (MS-HUG) Health Innovation Award this year for “disease surveillance,” based on its creative data extraction and deployment methods. understanding of how the EMR works and just how much data resides there, she said. The facility is actively immunizing their child patient population for the gamut of conditions, including hepatitis, diphtheria, measles, mumps, chicken pox and the flu. Behind the ehR-Ball Although they serve as the vehicle for generating outcomes, electronic health and medical records are not very common in key facilities like ambulatory surgery centers, a new survey shows. Commissioned by Wolters Kluwer, the research found that 82 percent of ASCs don’t use electronic records, 85 percent use paper perioperative notes and 74 percent use dictation and transcription for physician procedure notes. Moreover, the study revealed that nearly onefourth of the ASC administrators do not know their current per-chart document management costs and among those who are, nearly 70 percent place the cost between $3 and $9. Yet external factors are pressuring ASCs to move toward electronic records, most notably a CMS four-year reimbursement phase-in project that calls for careful cost management and accurate billing. CMS has also added approximately 800 surgical procedures that qualify for reimbursement when performed in the ambulatory setting. “These changes present both opportunities and challenges for ASCs and compel them to examine best documentation and billing practices that directly impact revenue and reimbursement,” said Arvind Subramanian, president and CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions and ProVation Medical. ■ More at healthcareITnews.com e Connect: outcoMes 0508 ● emR ‘PoweR’ The electronic medical record – close cousin of the EHR – is at the heart of one health system’s award-winning outcomes movee ● Connect: MediNotes 0508 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://healthcareITnews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9202 http://www.medinotes.com http://www.medinotescinician.com http://www.medinotes.com http://www.medinotescinician.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=9213

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Healthcare IT News - May 2008 Contents Help Wanted Speeding Up Government Silos Privacy Pressures Tracking Disease Rah Rah Health! TriZetto Suit Outcomes Watch Ambulatory EHRs

Healthcare IT News - May 2008

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