Healthcare IT News - November 2007 - (Page 22) 22 Healthcare IT News ■ November 2007 PHYSICIaN PRaCTICES & amBulaTORY CaRE pushing us to give them more, and the nursing staff is learning how to become more efficient with the technology.” The rate of IT adoption in longterm care settings is slow compared to hospitals, but increasing. Wilt says that most long-term care facilities will invest a maximum of one to two percent of their budgets on healthcare IT. “It’s so low because most of these organizations operate on thin profit margins,” Wilt explained. “Their income is primarily from Medicare.” Peter Kress, vice president and CIO of ACTS Retirement-Life Communities in Ambler, PA., estimates that approximately 15 percent of long-term care facilities currently use EHRs and other healthcare IT tools. But those Peter Kress numbers are growing. “There is a lot of interest in pointof-care devices for routine data www.HealthcareITNews.com collection,” Kress said. “Facilities are adopting touchscreen devices, handhelds, even voice-activated devices. These technologies will dramatically increase the dataflow in our organizations.” Kress points out that the kind of medical care offered in long-term care facilities is different than in hospitals. It’s generally not acute care, but revolves around maintaining “wellness.” “The popular definition of longterm care is too narrow,” Kress said. “It’s not just nursing home care, but is more broadly focused on health maintenance. The IT we adopt will be oriented toward coordinating care through a variety of settings.” ■ More at eRICksoN Continued from page 21 and link to outside specialists,” said Daniel Wilt, Erickson’s vice president of information technology. “We also want quality reporting capabilities to improve patient care, but we’re still a few years away from that.” Long-term care facilities face hurdles in rolling out technology that would be familiar to other healthcare institutions. Training staff unfamiliar with computers was a major hurdle, Wilt said. “Two-thirds of our user base didn’t have basic computer skills,” he revealed, noting that clinical nursing assistants (CNAs) employ laptops or tablets at the bedside to check the health status of residents. “ The physicians Daniel Wilt were a bit hesitant at first, and it took a few years before the technology became second nature. Now our docs are HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: erICkSoN 1107 dRugs Continued from page 21 e ● Connect: WILLIaMBLaIr 1107 Healthmatics EHR. He converted one of his exam rooms into a small pharmacy to store the drugs. Using FirstFill, Abedin is able to stock select pharmaceuticals, track inventory and distribute drugs to patients as they leave the office. “We’re not trying to be a pharmacy,” Abedin said. “We’re just trying to make things more convenient for our patients.” The FirstFill service isn’t something that Allscripts promotes, as it prefers to keep its focus on other aspects of its EHR. But the company has experience in medication fulfillment services. “Allscripts began as a medication repackaging business and we still support this legacy business as one of Glen Tullman many ways for patients to obtain their medications,” said Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts. Because Abedin dispenses prepackaged medications, he says that managing the process is not timeintensive. He estimates that point of care medication disbursal generates approximately $1,000 in additional income per provider, per month. “We’ve doubled the amount of prescriptions we distribute each month, and patients seem to like it,” Abedin said. “This helps reduce the number of calls we get from patients complaining that pharmacies didn’t receive a prescription.” Some observers think that technologies like FirstFill could help improve patient compliance with physician’s care recommendations. “Physicians distribute only a small selection of medications on-site, such as antibiotics or hypertension drugs,” said Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor for government affairs at the Medical Group Management Association. “About a third of all prescriptions go unfilled, so if this can improve those numbers, the value can be significant.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: druGS 1107 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8043 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=8111 http://www.williamblair.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8042 http://www.williamblair.com
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