IT leaders in the healthcare provider space must choose their electronic medical record software very carefully— it houses their patients’ pertinent information and is somewhat of a lifeline to the providers’ service.
I spoke with four different healthcare IT leaders about which EMR system they use and why it is successful. As something so important to their IT infrastructure, I expected there to be a repeat of at least one system, regardless of their varying areas of healthcare expertise, in the hopes of finding one system that is said to be the absolute best among CIO opinions. However, instead I came to find that not only did all four IT leaders give me different EMR systems as their answer, but they also had significant reasoning as to why they chose it and why it is successful for them.
One EMR platform mentioned was UNI/CARE Pro-Filer, which “I think a couple of the key reasons for its success are the customer support from UNI/CARE and the fact that it is utilizing a Microsoft SQL database,” says David Bozwick, the Director of Technology Systems at Community Health Center in Akron, Ohio. “Profiler™-2011 supports multi-company processing and multiple business lines within a single database. This means it can collect unduplicated information -- such as client demographics -- as well as financial and basic clinical information, such as allergies, vitals and diagnoses. For CIOs, this means all their companies utilize the same database, and multiple companies’ reports are easily accommodated. And supporting one database is much more efficient. In addition, CIOs like Profiler™-2011’s Service Oriented Architecture. It utilizes standard Microsoft tools for easy deployment and support, allowing them to achieve rapid adoption and interoperability,” says Dr. May Ahdab, CEO of UNI/CARE.
“CIOs also look to us for support. Our support services rely on a ticket tracking tool that documents requests, establishes a prioritized action plan, and then tracks the status of our response and final solution. Our system allows CIOs to monitor and document requests and their resolution.”
Longitudinal Medical Record (LMR) was the second EMR platform mentioned in my conversations with the IT leaders. Moshe Coriat, the Systems Engineer at Partners HealthCare Systems said that they use LMR because they are able to spend more time with their patients and easily share data with other clinicians across the organization. “LMR was developed in-house and it represents a key component of the Partners information system strategy. World-class medical informaticians and researchers within our organization are closely involved in the product design and development,” said Coriat.
Another EMR platform is the Misys platform. Craig Cypress, the Director of IT at ProngerSmith Medical Center said that they currently use the Misys platform, but are moving over to an AllScripts Enterprise product 1st quarter next year. “I believe at the core the success is in the efficiencies gained by all,” said Cypress.
The last EMR platform of choice by these IT leaders was ShareCare from the ECHO Group. This electronic medical record system is for a Behavioral Healthcare environment; therefore, Dr. Earle Charles, the CIO of Kedren Mental Health in Los Angeles, CA, presented this system as the EMR that he uses. “We have had it for a few years but have not fully implemented all of its modules…over the next months we are planning to assess ShareCare as well as other products to address my fundamental need for a solution such as this, which is ‘ease of use’ for my users, especially the Clinical staff,” said Dr. Charles. Of course features, functionality and quality are just as important and they are expected to be in all candidate solutions that we will be looking at. The parts of this product that have been implemented are successful, however, the remaining modules would require a fair amount of customization for our users and I am not certain that I am going to go down that path at this time.
Regardless of what system you use or what software you implement in your healthcare provider organization, it is important to consider the varying options that are out there—your EMR/EHR system can never be too good, it can only get better. Your patients put their personal information in your hands with trust so it is only fair to them to ensure that it is completely safe and ready for use whenever needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment