Electronic evidence-based protocols used as a “shared baseline” at the patient bedside may help eliminate unnecessary medical care—and that can lead a health care entity down the road to being a top-performing organization, as one case study illustrates.

IT plays a crucial role in preventing health-care-associated infections (HAIs), according to a new white paper from GE Healthcare IT.

HAIs affect 1.7 million inpatients each year, and are the fourth leading cause of U.S. deaths. Additionally, they cost the U.S. health care system as much as $35 billion each year. According to the GE Healthcare IT report, however, HAIs can be prevented with emerging technologies, such as electronic medical records (EMRs).

As one example, the report highlights the case of Intermountain Healthcare, where 80 percent of care delivery is evidence-based (vs. less than 55 percent for the rest of the industry).

There, evidence-based care protocols are rolled into a clinical information system and used as a “shared baseline” at the patient bedside. Physicians are expected to base their treatments on these protocols, making any necessary adjustments to meet individual patient needs.

Evidence-based protocols can improve accuracy, as illustrated by the work of Anthony Lee, MD, of Columbus Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio. Lee created a Web-based system that automatically calculated a patient’s next dose of insulin. Instead of reviewing multiple pages and performing manual calculations, nurses simply enter two variables and the system instructed what action to take next. As it turned out, nursed calculated the insulin rate incorrectly nearly 25 percent of the time with the paper system, but only 1 percent of the time with the Web-based system (and in 80 percent of cases with errors, the insulin infusion rate was miscalculated by at least one unit per hour).

According to the GE Healthcare IT report, using such evidence-based care protocols for clinical decision support also eliminates unnecessary care, which has helped make Intermountain a top-performing organization. Other health care organizations of all sizes may wish to emulate this practice.

The entire report is available here.

Only a fraction of U.S. physicians have fully implemented and begun to use an electronic medical record (EMR) despite years of widespread availability and incentives, and for many good reasons—but gloEMR is covering resistance with its commitment to truly meaningful use.

The process of vetting and implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) can be challenging for any medical group, with barriers to adoption including excessive perceived costs for setup and maintenance, disruption to physician productivity, and insufficient clinical and financial benefits.

But technological progress, HITECH Act incentives, and consumer demand have all combined to overcome resistance and spur a wave of adoption—and today, many physicians have seen firsthand that the right system can help their practices gain greater efficiency and generate increased revenues.

The key is to adopt the right system, such as gloEMR 6.0, gloStream’s flagship EMR, which has been certified by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), an ONC-ATCB, in accordance with the applicable certification criteria adopted by the Secretary of HHS.

gloStream guarantees that gloEMR will provide eligible providers with everything they need to achieve meaningful use and qualify for stimulus incentive funding. That means gloStream will provide everything the government requires for customers to be eligible for stimulus payments—and more.

That’s because to gloStream, meaningful use is about more than just meeting government requirements; it’s about making sure clients are completely comfortable using their EMRs and getting the results they need.

gloStream achieves this with its innovative gloDNA process, which allows the company to understand the needs of a practice so gloEMR can be configured the way the individual doctors practice medicine. During this process, gloStream reviews the practice’s needs in order to build a customized solution and recommend process changes that help smooth the transition to a digital environment. It then follows through with a wellness phase designed to make sure clients continue to be truly meaningful users.

That’s what gloStream calls “truly meaningful use,” and that’s its guarantee.

More than 70 percent of office-based physicians are eligible for federal incentives but do not have a basic EMR, according to a recent study. However, that will likely change from 2013 through 2015, the final years of the HITECH bonus period, and as younger physicians begin practicing medicine.

Roughly 83 percent of office-based physicians could qualify for federal incentives for electronic medical records (EMR) implementation if they meet meaningful use criteria, according to a study published in Health Affairs.

The study—which used data from the 2007 and 2008 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey to measure the use of EMRs by office-based physicians—found that some physicians would qualify for Medicare incentives, some for Medicaid incentives, and some for both. Eligibility was based on the number of Medicare and Medicaid patients seen.

Interesting data points from the study include:

• 70.5 percent of physicians are eligible for incentives, but do not have a basic EMR.

• 12.1 percent of physicians are eligible for incentives and already have a basic EMR.

• 14.6 percent of physicians are not eligible for incentives and do not have a basic EMR.

• 2.8 percent of physicians are not eligible for incentives and already have a basic EMR.

• Location matters: Midwest physicians were more likely to qualify, Western physicians less likely.

• Specialty matters: Psychiatrists are significantly less likely to use EMRs than other specialists.

• Practice type matters: Physicians in a solo practice and physicians in practices owned by a health maintenance organization (HMO) are less likely than those in larger practices to qualify for incentives and use EMRs.

While physicians may be slow to embrace EMRs, they won’t resist for long, according to Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs. Dentzer predicts more physicians will adopt EMRs from 2013 through 2015, in the final years of the HITECH bonus period. Moreover, as younger physicians begin practicing, the operating standard will likely change to using EMRs.

In our opinion, implementing sooner is better than implementing later. Contact us for more information about getting an EMR.

EMRs provide measurable benefits for providers of all sizes, including small practices, according to a recent survey. Plus, the return on investment is high: According to researcher, it costs just $7,857 and takes just 130 hours to implement an EMR at a five-member practice.

In contrast to prior suggestions that electronic medical records (EMRs) may not benefit small health care providers, a new survey says there are measurable benefits for providers of all sizes.

To conduct the survey, current and past Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) staff members looked 154 peer-reviewed articles written from 2007 to 2010.

In their paper “The Benefits of Health Information Technology: A Review of the Recent Literature Shows Predominantly Positive Results,” they report that 92 percent reached the conclusion that the use of health IT has an overall positive effect.

The survey also found evidence of emerging measurable benefits for small health care practices in addition to the large ones.

That may be because the return on investment is high. Case in point: Dr. Neil Fleming, vice president for health care research at Baylor Health Center System, says EHR implementation cost $7,857 per physician and takes 130 hours at a five-member practice.

The reason for the discrepancy with prior studies, says David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health care IT, is that prior studies focused on the early years of EHR development when functionality was not as mature.

“Two salient aspects of this more recent synthesis are that it brings the literature up to date and extends it beyond the few large systems that were the source of most information on the record for health information technology, and looks at it in a much more representative set of provider settings,” Blumenthal said.

Related articles: New survey shows EHRs benefit even small providers

Doctors can track patient location from admission to discharge, access and share daily schedules and calendars, order labs, refill prescriptions, and more.

An April 2010 New York Times article, Doctors and Patients, Lost in Paperwork, says that an average physician spends as much time doing paperwork as he or she does with the patient.

“Paperwork, or documentation, takes up as much as a third of a physician’s workday; and for many practicing doctors, these administrative tasks have become increasingly intolerable, a source of deteriorating professional morale,” the article states.

The solution: a paperless practice, which isn’t a new phenomenon in healthcare. And there may be no better time to go paperless, given the current government push toward electronic medical records (EMRs). EMRs can help you document patient records electronically, and also makes communications much more efficient by allowing you to share patient records and send prescriptions with a single click.

The key is to select an EMR that helps, not hampers, productivity. A solution that forces you to spend the same amount of time as you would with a paper-based record is hardly an effective solution.

Consider gloEMR, one of the very first EMRs to be Stimulus certified through the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT).Through the dashboard that is the heart of gloEMR, doctors can track patient location from admission to discharge, access and share daily schedules and calendars, order labs, refill prescriptions, and more.

gloEMR is also unique in that it leverages several key Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office Word for text editing. Microsoft technology makes it easy to create practice-specific templates for routine encounters without expensive programming or training—which means your EMR improves productivity.

Contact us for more information.

Policymakers are already working on the next round of meaningful use measures.

Have you implemented your electronic medical record (EMR) yet? Better hurry: The Department of Health and Human Services is already considering measures to the second stage of meaningful use—when many health care providers haven’t even begun tackling the first stage.

As you may know, meaningful use will happen in three stages: Stage 1 will begin in 2011, Stage 2 in 2013 and Stage 3 in 2015. Each stage will add more requirements to demonstrate meaningful use.

In late 2010 the Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel, the Health IT Policy Committee quality measures workgroup, sought public feedback about its ideas to measure meaningful use in Stages 2 and 3 for 2013 and 2015. The workgroup’s job was to determine what is missing in 2011 quality measures and come up with improved measures.

The workgroup’s ideas include measures for reconciliation of medications when patients are treated by multiple providers, adverse drug event reporting, and services to promote healthy lifestyles. A list of proposed measures is available here.

The country’s move toward EMRs is moving along quickly. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to do so. Contact us for more information

Despite $20 billion in EMR implementation incentives offered by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there’s still a problem when it comes to calculating return on investment in health care IT, according to a recent Computerworld article.

First, many health care providers have a hard time generating the upfront capital required to invest in an EHR in the first place.

Second, any cost savings from the implementation of an EMR often don’t go to the owner of the technology but to another player in the health care system, such as insurers.

That being the case, is an EMR really worth it?

Certainly, in the sense that EMRs can save health care providers money—if they’re implemented and used properly. Key to doing so, however, is implementing an EMR that works with your processes, and training staff to use it properly.

Future changes in the health care system could also make EMRs more cost-effective. For example, according to the Computerworld article, as the government moves toward a reimbursement model that pushes the cost of treating problems caused by poor care back onto the providers, EMRs could become more cost-effective.

For now, however, it’s essential to ensure that your EMR works for you—which means making sure you have the recommendations of your IT provider before you implement, and the cooperation of your staff during implementation and use.

Related articles: Health care IT isn’t living up to the hype

EHRs are a long way from living up to expectations, according to a recent article in Computerworld—but not all EHRs present common problems.

As of 2009, only 12% of U.S. hospitals had adopted electronic health records (EHRs), according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. That may be because many EHR projects fail, according to a study by University College London. And they fail, in many cases, because they’re hard to use, to experts from the Institute of Medicine: Health care providers have to flip among many screens to access data, which can be more cumbersome than working with paper charts.

So how can EMRs be improved? According to a July 2010 Computing Technology Industry Association survey, health care providers want increased speed, easier use, lower cost, removal of unnecessary functions, greater interoperability with other systems and better remote access.

If you’re looking for this functionality, consider gloEMR from gloStream. It’s the only EMR with Microsoft Office built right in, which makes the sharing of data simple. It offers a user-friendly dashboard so one click is all it takes to find, view, and work with the most critical patient information. It also offers the potential for mobile computing, as gloStream is committed to meeting the ongoing needs of its customers now and in the future.

Getting gloEMR is now easier than ever. gloStream recently announced the “glo For It!” EMR replacement program. Under the program, any practice that upgrades to gloEMR from a competitor’s EMR will receive a gloPM practice management license, a $7,500 value, for free. gloPM, the latest addition to the gloStream suite of products, is a powerful, easy to learn and use practice management system that simplifies scheduling, billing, and report creation—all with Microsoft technology.

So don’t be one of 41% of doctors and nurses surveyed by the Computing Technology Industry Association who say they are only “partly satisfied/partly dissatisfied” with their EHR system; be totally satisfied with gloEMR.

Related articles: Health care IT isn’t living up to the hype

When 30 percent to 40 percent of all electronic health record (EHR) implementations fail, by some estimates, following best practices is essential to success—and those practices are surprisingly simple, according to two consultants.

The following six best practices are essential to success in EHR implementation.

Understand that a medical practice is not an extension of a hospital. Your practice will have different EHR needs—so don’t duplicate what the hospital has done.

Tailor your EHR to fit within staff workflows. No EHR will meet every single user’s needs, but you can decide which aspects should work for all users and which aspects can be adjusted on a case-by-case basis. To do this, talk to your staff—and be sure you have their recommendations and cooperation before proceeding.

Eliminate duplication. Minimize redundant data entry, such as patient demographics. That data should be entered once—but available throughout all modules and interfaces.

Don’t rush implementation. Train, train, train—beginning with the basics, and following a carefully planned set of procedures. It will save you time later.

Identify ways the EHR could fail. Talk to users to find out how they think the EHR could fail—and use that knowledge to prevent problems in the future.

Work with experts. Assistance from someone who has experience in successfully implementing EHRs is critical—and can make the difference in success or failure.

Related articles: Six best practices for EHR implementation

gloEHR offers five key features of tomorrow’s EMR:  interoperability, scalability, easy maintenance, a user-friendly interface, and the potential for mobile computing.

As more and more EMRs come onto the market, it’s becoming more difficult to choose one that will remain usable well into the future. According to one IT consulting firm, health care providers should look for five key components.

Three factors are essential in an EMR, and are quickly becoming the standard:

• Interoperability. gloEMR is the only EMR with Microsoft Office built right in—which makes sharing data simple.
• Scalability. Microsoft technology in gloEMR makes it easy to create practice-specific templates for routine encounters without expensive programming.
• Easy maintenance. The familiarity of Microsoft technology in gloEMR reduces implementation time and ongoing maintenance.

Two additional factors will distinguish tomorrow’s EMR from the rest:

• User-friendly design and interface. gloEMR offers user-friendly dashboard—so one click is all it takes to find, view, and work with the most critical patient information.
• The potential for mobile computing. gloStream is committed to meeting the ongoing needs of its customers—now and in the future.

Does your EMR have those features? gloEMR does. And now getting goEMR is easier. gloStream recently announced the “glo For It!” EMR replacement program. Under the program, any practice that upgrades to gloEMR from a competitive EMR will receive a gloPM practice management license, a $7,500 value, for free.

gloPM, the latest addition to the gloStream suite of products, is a powerful and easy to learn and use practice management system. It simplifies scheduling, billing, and report creation—all with Microsoft technology.

Related articles: Five key features of tomorrow’s EHR