Health Imaging & IT - April 2008 - (Page 44)

iT TRends By Amy Buttell Crane implementing iT Solutions Getting Physicians onboard In the drive towards increased efficiencies, either implementing or upgrading automated physician reporting systems is a major goal for many imaging facilities. From computerized provider order entry (CPOE) to cardiovascular information systems practices and clinical departments are bringing new technology online designed to automate as much as possible of the physician reporting process. But to make it work, you’ve got to get your physicians on board. Gaining physician mind share and participation on may be easier said than done. In fact, training physicians in using the technology you’ve installed to automate reporting is the last step in the process. Unless you want the process to drag into the next decade, you’ve got to lay your groundwork very carefully, inviting administrative, physician and clinical leaders and staff into the process at a very early stage. Otherwise, your stakeholders, particularly physicians, may become extremely resistant to the idea, slowing the progress to a crawl as you work through the resistance at the back end rather than the front end. Take for example LifeBridge Health in Baltimore, Md., a health system with two major hospitals. The training process was the culmination of a long-term effort that began years before the Cerner Millennium CPOE system was brought online, according to Ev Amaral, vice president of operations improvement. “The first thing we did was to hire a consulting group to help us with our thinking in terms of a readiness assessment—how ready our facilities were to adopt CPOE,” she says. “Also, we wanted to find out where we were in terms of the business case for CPOE with our resources, management and project skills,” she continues. Only after a management retreat and conversations with important administrative and physician stakeholders did LifeBridge even start to put together a strategic plan to implement the technology. Her take-aways from the experience? Involve key physicians and administrators early, realize the process is going to take a long time and have a lot of hands-on help available when implementation starts. Jon Pavlicek, project manager for cardiology at Banner Health, agrees that any type of automated physician reporting system, especially when installed in conjunction with other technology upgrades, is going to take several years to implement and require a major commitment from administration and physician leaders to gain mindshare. Banner Health, a healthcare system with 3,065 acute-care hospital beds in facilities in continues on page 46 Healthimaging.com 44 Health Imaging & IT | april 2008 http://Healthimaging.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT - April 2008

Health Imaging & IT - April 2008 Contents On the Web The Enterprise News Update Cracking Down: CT Radiation Dose 3D Rendering: Options Galore Thinking Thin-Client Modality Review Ergonomics & Design Special Section: Storage Strategies Imaging Tools Technology Outlook People & Technology Technology Review IT Trends Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - April 2008

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