Visiting the HIMSS Innovation Center

I got to see the HIMSS Innovation Center in Cleveland this week as members of the Health Story Project leadership held a face-to-face meeting at the site for strategic planning.   It is an impressive facility,

The annual Connect-a-thon event for interoperability testing was taking place many floors below.

5 Secrets to Improving Your EMR Process

Unhappy with how long it takes to document your patient encounters? You’re not alone. According to a study by the Rand Corporation, almost half of doctors who have implemented EMR/EHR software say the system hinders their ability to interact with patients and overloads them with stress.

If you ask the doctors and clinicians at your healthcare organization to describe how they feel about their EMR, what do you think they’d say? What if you had a way to make the documentation process less cumbersome?

5 Secrets to Improving Your EMR Process

• Dictation: Believe it or not, you can still use dictation to capture your patient notes. A lot of providers thought that when the HITECH Act was passed, dictation went out the window. However, you can use dictation to populate your EMR and achieve Meaningful Use.
• Transcription: Providers today often feel like they do more clerical work than clinical work. Giving medical transcription professionals your dictations allow doctors the time and freedom they need to focus on quality patient care.
• Back-End ASR: Medical records must be created quickly and correctly. Finding a balance between the two has troubled healthcare risk managers for decades. Using back-end automatic speech recognition software can help speed up the process and maintain accuracy. A provider’s dictated notes are automatically transcribed, then edited by a trained transcriptionist for accuracy and fact checking.
• Patient Narrative: Including the patient narrative is vital for whole health care. On top of that, it is an integral part of interoperability. Being able to document, in the EMR, the patient’s wishes will help doctors and clinicians provide more patient-centered care. Consolidated CDA is a great tool for incorporating the patient narrative; make sure you choose an EMR/EHR that is primed for Consolidated CDA.
•  Interoperability: With all the new federal and state regulations, along with major advances in healthcare information technology, choosing an EMR provider that emphasizes interoperability is essential for your patients, providers and bottom line. Your EMR needs to be updatable and should be compatible with other products and software specific to your industry and needs.

The Rand study showed that many providers believe that EMR and EHR systems often act as obstacles to quality care. This is probably the number one complaint with electronic documentation – doctors and clinicians feel like they look at computer screens more than their patients’ faces. On top of that, they face endless hours of digital paperwork, which really drains their morale. These five simple tips can improve not just the accuracy of records, but also reduce risk, improve doctor-patient relationships and increase morale.

These secrets can help you improve your EMR process.  InfraWare has helped many healthcare organizations. Our No-click Documentation^sm solution could be just the thing your organization needs to leap into the new era of medical documentation and record-keeping.

Regain Your Voice in 2015: Top Health IT Resolutions to Boost Provider Satisfaction

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday in an urban emergency room. Shotgun wounds and car accidents come flying through the door. Amid all the chaos we find doctors spending more time looking at EMR screens than their patients, so they are compliant with the hospital’s electronic medical record (EMR) software. In fact, one study found doctors spend 44 percent of their time on the documentation associated with EMRs.

That’s almost 5-and-a-half hours of a 12-hour shift NOT engaged in direct, quality patient care.

2015 is going to be a big year in healthcare and, possibly an even bigger one in health IT. There is a lot of innovative tech emerging, as well as current technology making substantial upgrades. Dictation is a great example. Many clinicians preferred dictation for documenting their patient encounters, but when the HITECH Act’s Meaningful Use was implemented they thought they had to let it go.

They thought wrong. Dictation can make the EMR process more efficient, and still achieve Meaningful Use. When we give doctors back their voices, patient care improves, documentation errors decline and providers get back to focusing on doing what they love.

4 Ways Doctors Can Regain Their Voice in 2015

Bring Back Dictation: MRs and EHRs are an important tool for documentation, but the time doctors spend dealing with documentation takes them away from their first priority. Turn-key solutions that combine automatic speech recognition with trained medical transcriptionists can unchain providers from their tedious documentation tasks.

Engage More Patients: Did you become a doctor to help people or to stare at a computer screen?  Documentation assistance allows providers to spend more quality time with patients and see more of them.

More Reasonable Hours: Doctors are expected to not only see a high-volume client load, but also document each encounter without any errors or risks. Medical transcriptionists edit dictated patient encounters into a structured data format, which can be dropped in any EMR ready for Consolidated CDA. That means fewer late nights and more vacation time for doctors, nurses and the whole medical staff.

Computing Anytime, Anywhere: Clinicians and other medical professionals use high-tech devices for a variety of tasks every day. Sometimes this requires them to be confined to one place, but in 2015, cloud and mobile technology will give them even more freedom. In fact, doctors can dictate and upload their patient encounters and even review their schedule and e-sign from their phones.

ERs aren’t the only hectic healthcare environment. Specialty physicians, primary care doctors and other medical professionals tackle hefty challenges in documentation every day. It’s time we cut away the red tape, boosting provider satisfaction and the quality of patient care. It’s time for doctors to regain their voice.

Happier Holidays with Health IT

The holidays might be a break for some folks, but not for those working in healthcare. Patients who put off taking care of those minor aches and pains suddenly flow in like a herd of reindeer. Holiday fiascos can land dad in the emergency room and mom at primary care for high blood pressure. Specialty providers, like podiatrists and dermatologists, get bombarded with appointments from patients using holiday leave to address issues they’ve been ignoring throughout the busy year.

The healthcare rush can really impact your workplace. The workflow jams, stress inflates and employee morale can plummet. This is an environment ripe for rushed patient encounters and documentation errors.

Perhaps one of the best holiday gifts you could offer your medical staff would be less stress. Skip the ham or the gift card and give them something that can help their jobs run more smoothly, not just during the holiday season, but also all year long.

4 Ways to Lower Stress in the Healthcare Workplace

Meaningful Work: Most medical personnel complain about the time electronic records programs take away from their patient contact. Give them the gift of dictation, allowing them to document patient encounters quickly and effectively, while still achieving Meaningful Use. This way they can turn away from computer screens and focus their attention back on their patients.

Smooth Workflow: We live by our smartphones. They remind us of important dates, keep us connected to our friends and families and organize our professional lives. Isn’t it about time healthcare caught up? Get your medical professionals a smartphone app that lets them dictate against their appointment schedule, review and e-sign documents.  

Reduce documentation errors: Healthcare administrators can help medical staff improve the quality and completeness of their patient records by giving them tools to help them populate their EMR/EHR systems more effectively. Implementing a documentation system that includes valuable narrative without taking more time improves the quality of records.

Increase Morale: Medical professionals need a solution that increases physician productivity and helps them refocus on providing high-quality patient care instead of documentation minutia. As the quality of patient care increases, the medical office culture becomes more light-hearted and other medical staff can focus back on their priorities. When the doctors are happier, everyone is happier.

Do these all sound like perfect gifts? Can’t decide on just one? You don’t have to. InfraWare's No-click Documentation solution offers your doctors dictation and medical transcription that will integrate into any EMR for Meaningful Use Stage 2 compliance. If your practice is ready for a boost in morale and productivity, give us a call today to schedule your free consultation.

New health IT data architecture improves doctor-patient experience

Originally published on TechPoint on Oct. 28, 2014

Recently TechPoint, a central hub of Indiana technology news, invited me to discuss a topic I've presented on at conferences for MGMA, HIMSS and AHDI throughout the year. While I have spoken on many issues, the most salient one, and the one discussed in this TechPoint blog, is how Meaningful Use can be achieved dictation. 

Photo: TechPoint

New health IT data architecture improves doctor-patient experience

by Nick Mahurin, TechPoint Contributing Blogger, Oct. 28, 2014

I am delighted to be speaking today at the National Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Conference in Las Vegas. The topic of my presentation at the conference is “Consolidated CDA & Meaningful Use,” which are hot-button issues among physicians nationwide due to stringent, though well-meaning new regulations.

What is Meaningful Use? Meaningful Use (MU) embodies government regulations that require healthcare providers to implement Electronic Medical Records (EMR) programs and attest to using them in a meaningful way. Regulators want proof that doctors and thereby their patients are benefiting from mandated new technologies.

As simple and logical as that may sound, it has not been easy. According to a report from the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Approximately 1.2 billion clinical documents are produced in the United States each year and until recently, 60% of clinical documentation was transcribed from dictation. Imagine the impact on your business if you suddenly had to start capturing more than half of your data in a completely new way.

Read the full article here.