Healthcare IT News - December 2008 - (Page 18)

18 Healthcare IT News ■ December 2008 PHySICIaN PRaCtICES & aMBUlatoRy CaRE www.HealthcareITNews.com CCNv Continued from page 17 Selig says CCNV wants a patient kiosk in every waiting room, which could mean rolling out 75 kiosks to practice locations. About 240 CCNV providers are using an electronic health record. Selig says the last two health centers are scheduled to go live with their EHRs by the first quarter of 2009. Gary E. Michael, MD, medical director for Clinch River Health Services Inc., a community health center in Dungannon, Va., “Planning is spearheaded the CCNV really the key to eHealth Workgroup, a comimplementation.” mittee developed to focus on the planning needed to it,” he adds. “You have to implement an EHR system. write out policies for how “Planning is really the key Gary E. Michael, and who will be using EMR to implementation,” says MD functionalities.” Michael. Analyzing process“You have to know what to put es, how processes will be changed and rules around processes are all into the EHR and what you want things that need to be talked about to get out of it before you start putting data in,” says Jackie Moen, before implementation. “If these processes aren’t work- project director of the Northern ing well now, an EHR will not fix Minnesota Network, a consortium QUalIty IMPRovEMENt MEaSURES tRaCKEd at CRHS ➔ Staff satisfaction has increased by 31.5 percent. ➔ Productivity increased from 2006 to 2007 from 13,427 encouters to 13,816. ➔ Realized savings of 16.6 percent in dictation cost & ofﬁce supplies since EHR roll-out. ➔ Average Rx reﬁll time has improved by 81.4 percent. of three rural community centers. The network is also in the final stages of its EHR rollout. “It’s like building a house – you can’t put the rooms in first.” Staff at Clinch River Health Services used Sandbox, a Web based tool, to allow staff to use the EHR system in real-time before they actually went live. Michael says they took advantage of a practice readiness assessment tool from the Virginia Health Quality Center, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Virginia. The tool is based on the Doctor’s Office Quality-Information Technology (DOQ-IT) project that helps practices prepare for EHRs. The Clinch River team also used TechSoup.org, a Web site that provides free technology support and access to donated and discounted technology products. The rest of the EHR funding was through a rural development grant. Michael says it paid about 40 percent of their costs. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: CCNv 1208 ● BloGGING Continued from page 17 confirmed these issues were not uncommon. After attempting to write articles about his findings, he said, he was forced to “bypass traditional outlets and go directly to an audience.” “A filtering process is going on. Companies don’t want to advertise problems and people in the field don’t want to talk about failures,” he says. He says what drives him to blog is the fact that due to these IT failures there is the potential for patients to be harmed. When it comes to IT there is an “irrational exuberance about Scot Silverstein, it, almost to the MD point of worshiping it,” he says. “There is great value in not just writing up success but writing about difficulties and what not to do,” says Silverstein. John Halamka, MD, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, has been mentioned on the “Health Care Renewal Blog” a few times and says he enjoys its “dialogue and insights.” Halamka is no stranger to blogging, with his own blog called “Life as a Healthcare CIO.” Halamka says he blogs “to communicate my experiences, both good and bad, and to engage the healthcare community in an ongoing dialog about pressing issues of the day.” He also says it has cut back his e-mail by 10 percent ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com Connect: BLoGGING 1208 e ● Connect: orIoN 1208 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.TechSoup.org http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10531 http://www.orionhealth.com http://www.orionhealth.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10533 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=10558

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - December 2008

Healthcare IT News - December 2008 Contents AHIC 2.0 Debuts See How It Works Monitored to Health Right Decisions Neurologist Needed HiMSS Insider: Four to the Board Heartened Generation Next Clinical Toolkit: Inpatient EMRs Management Solutions: Asset Tracking

Healthcare IT News - December 2008

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