Volume 5 - Issue 2 - April 2010

Editor's Note

By: Donna Carroll
Editor - The MEDITECH Community Bulletin
VP, Business Development & Recruitment - Systems Personnel

Welcome to the latest issue of The MEDITECH Community Bulletin. Below are just a few of the items found in this month's newsletter:

• Our Customer Spotlight column this month is shining on Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City, Missouri for its appearance in an article featured in Health Data Management magazine. The article discusses the question many Emergency Departments are currently facing: whether to go with a best of breed or an enterprise ED solution.

• We have a Guest Spot column this month contributed by Mike Valentine of mTuitive Software. Mike talks about the College of American Pathologists’ new, stricter reporting guidelines for hospital pathology laboratories.

• This issue’s Industry Spotlight discusses the various challenges (and rewards) of implementing Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE). Read Kyle Hardy’s article from Healthcare IT News.

• Our Featured Employer column this issue details two open positions at Medicine Bow Technologies in Laramie, Wyoming. We also have several new advertisers on our MeditechCareers.com site, so please be sure to check them out as well.

• John Sharpe of Comstock Software continues his discussion of  "Custom F9 Lookups for NPR Reports" in this month’s Tricks of the Trade column.

• There are numerous press releases in this issue’s Recent News, including many updates from MEDITECH Inc., partnering vendors, and customers.

• All information and content for the May 2010 issue of The MEDITECH Community Bulletin must be received no later than Thursday, April 29th. Thank you.

Enjoy the start of Spring!
Donna

Customer Spotlight: Emergency Situation

Best of breed, or enterprise integration? That is the vexing question facing emergency departments looking to automate.

Source: Health Data Management, March 1, 2010, Elizabeth Gardner

Hospitals looking at emergency department software face a vexing dilemma: should they deploy a best-of-breed system carefully tailored to the department's needs? Or should they turn to their enterprise vendor for a system that's completely integrated-at least according to the vendor's marketing staff-with the rest of the hospital? The niche systems are designed specifically for (and often by) ED physicians, and their intended users sometimes advocate passionately for them. But more and more hospitals have their eye on an enterprise electronic health record, complete with clinical decision support, where a piece of data entered in any department is immediately and automatically available to all others. An interface to a separate ED system rarely behaves with equal seamlessness, and may not be enough to achieve the benefits promised by an EHR.

"The availability of previous records and information in real time is invaluable," says Reid Conant, M.D., who is both chief medical information officer at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, Calif., and a consultant on emergency department information systems. For example, ED physicians can often either rule out or confirm a heart attack in a patient with chest pain if they can access past electrocardiogram records.

The past information can also affect the orders an ED physician gives, Conant says. "If I'm ordering a contrast agent for a CT scan, I need to know whether the patient has any kidney damage," he says. "An isolated system can't grab that creatinine measurement from three months ago and tell me as I put in the order."

In Conant's view, enterprise software will ultimately win the day over best-of-breed in the ED, despite that department's unique information needs and a workflow that moves very differently from other areas in a hospital. The vast majority of hospitals over 100 beds have ED software installed already, according to figures from HIMSS Analytics, a Chicago-based research firm. (See chart this page). However, a study released in December by KLAS Research supports Conant; it shows that among providers who are shopping for a new or replacement ED information system, 72 percent are planning to leave a best-of-breed product in favor of an enterprise system. That percentage is two and a half times higher than it was in a similar study done in 2005.

"Integration is a lot more important than people might think," says Jason Cecil, chief information officer at 114-bed Capital Region Medical Center in Jefferson City, Mo., which is a Stage 6 hospital, as measured by HIMSS Analytics. Measuring progress along the I.T. adoption continuum, the HIMSS scale reaches 7 at the top rung. "Being able to have a single EHR for every unit is key to everything that we're doing."

The hospital has about 28,000 ED visits per year. It has had an enterprise system from Meditech, Westwood, Mass., since 2006, and added Meditech's ED software in 2007. The physician documentation piece of the ED system didn't go live until April 2009. The selection of Meditech occasioned some pushback from the department's physicians. They work at the hospital under contract as employees of TeamHealth, an emergency services outsourcing company that staffs more than 550 hospitals across the country.

"TeamHealth had suggestions about systems they had worked with, and our ED physicians had ideas about what they thought they wanted," says Cyndi Hake, R.N., a clinical analyst on the ED software project. "We talked to them a lot about intercommunication between different applications, and what they would lose if we had silos of information."

The group's medical director embraced the project and helped Cecil and Hake sell it to the rest of the group. "Now that they've been using it awhile, they like the integration and have discovered the benefits," Hake says. "When they order lab work, the results drop right in." Not only does information generated in the ED go directly to the patient's electronic record, but the emergency physicians have ready access to that record for things like allergy information and current medication lists.

Though most of the hospital's departments use Meditech software, the few that don't serve as a reminder of how painful interfaces can be, Hake says. "They're the thing we struggle with," she says. The transcription system, bought shortly before the Meditech decision was made, sends reports to the electronic health record. However, they're just text documents and not associated with specific fields in the EHR, which makes it difficult to pull the information back out again. "Sales people are good about saying they can interface with anything, but making systems talk to each other in a meaningful way is different," Hake says.

Another Kind of Integration

Hospitals tackling ED automation have learned that there is more than one way to approach system integration.

NorthCrest Medical Center in Springfield, Tenn., has a stand-alone ED system from Allscripts, Chicago. It's only interfaced to the hospital's enterprise system, provided by Healthcare Management Systems, Nashville, but it's integrated with the Allscripts systems that are in use (or being installed) at many of the primary care offices affiliated with the hospital. Strane says that while across-the-board integration would be great, good integration with physician offices is more useful to ED physicians than integration with the rest of the hospital.

"One of the challenges in the ED is that you treat people you haven't seen for awhile, and we may just have their med list from their last visit," says Nick Strane, M.D., ED medical director for the 81-bed hospital. It logs about 35,000 ED visits a year. "Allscripts Connect enables us to look at the records of their primary care office visits and make sure we're current on studies, surgeries, pathology reports and current allergies. It lets us extend our scope of practice."

Fighting for Best of Breed

Peter Cridge, M.D., fought hard to get his favorite best-of-breed system installed at the 392-bed University Medical Center at Princeton, where he's the hospital liaison for the emergency department and former ED chairman. He started with a department that operated entirely with paper (along with a system of colored clothespins to indicate a patient's status). From selection to implementation took almost six years, starting in 2001. Within the first two years his committee had decided on a niche ED system from Wellsoft, Somerset, N.J. A final decision was then put on hold while the hospital pondered the replacement of its enterprise software-a prospect that filled Cridge with dread because he was afraid that an integrated ED product would be imposed on his department.

"The problem with an integrated system is that it treats the ED like every other place, and it's different from just about every other place," Cridge says. "We have rapid turnover and widely varied patient needs-it's just a whole different world. We liked Wellsoft because it was designed by an ED doc who designed the system the way an ED doc thinks."

Cridge visited a reference site for one of the integrated systems that the hospital was considering, and got a demonstration from the ED physician champion. "He was going to show me how to do a chart," Cridge recalls. "I grabbed my watch and started timing him. He was four minutes in and he hadn't finished yet. There's no way that was going to work. It would have been a disaster."

Cridge says he can complete a complex chart in Wellsoft in under a minute.

In the end, to Cridge's great relief, the hospital decided to stick with its enterprise vendor, QuadraMed, Reston, Va., which didn't offer a system for emergency departments. That cleared the field for Wellsoft, which was finally implemented in November 2007 to the general happiness of the ED staff. The department quickly went from 100 percent paper to 100 percent computer order entry and documentation. "We got all the curmudgeons to do it without much of a whimper," Cridge says. "There's not a doc here who'd ever want to go back to the way it used to be."

As expected, the interfacing situation isn't as smooth as true integration would be. Currently the ED record is sent to the hospital's EHR as a PDF file. The caregivers can read it, but if they want the information from it to go into analyzable fields in the patient's chart, someone has to enter it in manually. However, the Wellsoft system is also interfaced to the lab and radiology systems, and the results of tests ordered in the ED automatically flow to the other systems in the hospital, as well as back to the ED.

"Is the rest of the hospital in love with it?" says Susan Sunyak, R.N., a clinical analyst for the ED. "No, they'd very much like it if everything we entered flowed over. But before Wellsoft, it wasn't there either. It was in the chart - if you could read the handwriting."

Guest Spot: Putting a 'CAP' on Pathology Reporting

By: Mike Valentine - VP, North American Sales - mTuitive Software

Hospital pathology laboratories are under the gun to meet the College of American Pathologists’ (CAP) new, stricter reporting guidelines.

In order to be in compliance, laboratories have until August 1st, 2010 at which point they must have implemented and adopted the 2010 versions of the CAP Protocols & Checklists - which contain elements from the new AJCC Cancer Staging Manual. This new standard has long been an American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer requirement for Accredited Cancer Programs but CAP has now expanded these standards to all pathology-reporting laboratories.

Laboratory Directors must ask themselves several questions:

1. How can we quickly implement the checklists?
2. How will this affect pathologists’ workflow?
3. Who is going to maintain new checklists whenever they’re released?
4. Will the synoptic reporting solution integrate with our MEDITECH pathology module?

Pathologists must be engaged immediately to discuss what, if any, changes to workflow will occur. The most efficient way for a laboratory to comply is by purchasing an electronic synoptic reporting system used directly by the pathologists. The return on investment is immediate as a result of reduced transcription costs. Pathologists also have the ability to sign a case out immediately, eliminating the need to review and edit a case. Turn-around-time of pathology reports is greatly reduced and reports are noticeably more accurate and complete as a result of built-in logic and error checking.

When a laboratory purchases synoptic reporting software, the vendor should update and maintain the content of the CAP checklists as part of the annual maintenance and support agreement. Laboratories should rest assured that no matter what changes the CAP makes, their vendor will implement them within days to weeks.

If, while seeking an electronic synoptic reporting solution, you learn that it will be the responsibility of the laboratory to obtain the CAP checklists and build the application yourself, keep looking. The amount of time required to build and, ultimately, maintain these checklists is prohibitive and more expensive than purchasing a software program.

Mike Valentine, VP of North American Sales, joined the mTuitive team in the fall of 2004. He graduated from Brown University in 1991 with a double business major and is currently mTuitive’s Vice President of North American Sales. Customer service and satisfaction being tops on Mike’s priority list, he also manages projects and oversees implementations. To learn more about the new CAP guidelines for synoptic reporting, you can contact Mike at mike.valentine@mtuitive.com or 508- 771-5800.

Industry Spotlight: CPOE challenging, but once done, physicians 'never go back'

Source: Healthcare IT News, February 11, 2010, Kyle Hardy, Community Editor

WASHINGTON -- Implementing a computerized physicians order entry system poses multiple challenges, with physician engagement at the top of the list.

“It is a complex and involved process,” said Leah Binder, CEO of the Washington, DC-based Leapfrog Group. “It involves a wide variety of clinical staff and you need to integrate with other systems. Also, the provider needs a CDS (clinical decision support) system that alerts physicians to potential errors, which there are a lot of.”

Implementing CPOE is a major requirement for Stage 1 meaningful use eligibility. Meaningful use Stage 1 requires providers to submit at least 10 percent of all orders using a CPOE system.

Binder said the number one challenge providers face with CPOE is getting physicians acclimated to the new systems.

“Doctors have learned to do their work in a certain way, and medication orders is a huge part of that,” said Binder. “And they are hesitant to interfere with the medication order process. The CPOE system may take a little longer at first, and physicians are under a lot of pressure to be more productive."

However, says Binder, "I’ve heard that once the CPOE system is integrated and physicians are using it, they never go back."

Binder said the second biggest barrier is reorienting the other IT systems. Once a CPOE systems is live, new problems arise, and providers need to have a good system in place to diagnose and correct these issues, she said.

Denni McColm, CIO of Citizens Memorial Hospital, based in Bolivar, Missouri, began implementation of CPOE in 2003. McColm approached the deployment in three phases.

“Phase one was to bring all docs online and stop printing paper forms for them to sign,” said McColm. “We introduced phase two by sending all orders through the CPOE system except medication. We sort of eased our physicians into using it. The final phase was integrating paperless medication. Once this was all done, our physicians had gotten to the point where the main concern was having a hybrid system. They were afraid of missing something by using paper.”

McColm said the big difference between CPOE and other systems is the amount of direct physicians interaction. Each physician had to be trained on the system and the environment was really important, said McColm.

“We tried a number of training environments and found that a one-on-one training approach with a physician work best,” said McColm.

Both McColm and Binder expressed optimism in regard to providers achieving the goals set by meaningful use. However, changes are needed, said Binder.

“I don’t like the requirement of having a provider implement a complete EMR without a CPOE system,” Binder said. “I think it should be up to the provider to develop a timeline. We should be looking at the system, not trying to micromanage the timeline in which it is being deployed.”

“Hospitals are convinced they can get it done,” said McColm. "Some hospitals don’t understand quality reporting and it will be difficult, but I think it’s doable."

“When it comes to implementing CPOE, there are best practices, but they aren’t well known,” said Binder. “We need to have in the public domain more information on best practices.”

Tricks of the Trade: MEDITECH NPR (Client Server) – Custom F9 Lookups for NPR Reports - Part2 of 2

By: John Sharpe, President, Comstock Software, Inc.

NOTE: This is Part 2 in a series titled: Custom F9 Lookups for NPR Reports. Reading Part 1, before reading further is recommended.

This is Part 2 in a series titled: Custom F9 Lookups for NPR Reports. Reading Part 1, before reading further is recommended.

There are times when it is desirable to pare down the items in a SELECT so the report user can make a quick selection based on relevant choices. Let’s review how you might accomplish that using a macro and MEDITECH’s Z.id & Z.id.lookup program.

A standard lookup on patient account from a nursing report will produce a list of patients by account number. Your nurses might want that list limited to patients with oxygen documentation. Limiting the patients in the lookup to just those with a particular intervention would trim the list considerably. You might think of this as a report running before the main report.

To get started, you need: 1) a Select Field for patient, 2) a macro to call the Z.id & Z.id.lookup procedures with your list of accounts (patients.f9.lookup), 3) a macro to build a list of accounts (patients.oxygen) & 4) a field attribute to call your lookup macro (patients.f9.lookup).

1) Open your report using NPR and define your Select Field for patient on the Sorts/Selects tab. Add a lookup for patient.

2) Define your lookup macro (patients.f9.lookup), using Enter/Edit Option 7.

3) Define the patients with oxygen intervention macro (patients.oxygen), using Enter/Edit Option 7.

4) Define the field attribute to call your lookup macro (patients.f9.lookup).

Select option 9, the NPR Edit Elements routine.

Edit the field attributes by Keying Y, then Enter. Key in your ID attribute call to the lookup macro (patients.f9.lookup).

You’ve made it this far and now you understand the mechanics of running a report for your Selection Critieria, before your main report ever runs! One thing you’ll want to keep in mind is performance, if the macros are run for complex criteria on large data structures, the F9 Lookup process will take forever.

If you have questions about this topic, get them answered at the MEDITECH Knowledge Exchange?

Thoughts? Email them to John at jsharpe@comstock-software.com.

John Sharpe is President / NPR Consultant at Comstock Software, Inc. Learn more about NPR Report Writing at the MEDITECH NPR Report Writing Blog.

Featured Employer: Sponsored by MeditechCareers.com

The online career hub for MEDITECH professionals

Every month, we feature one employer who has advertised their job posting on our affiliate web site: MeditechCareers.com. In addition to the basic job posting, we provide some information about the employer, their location and environment, and highlight them as a "Featured Employer" in this newsletter.

To advertise your MEDITECH-related opportunity on MeditechCareers.com and become a "Featured Employer", contact Donna Carroll at 413-569-1111.

Medicine Bow Technologies
Laramie, Wyoming

About the Organization:

Medicine Bow Technologies is a small IT company in southeastern Wyoming serving the IT needs of hospitals and healthcare facilities in Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. As a subsidiary of Ivinson Memorial Hospital, one of Medicine Bow Technologies' primary tasks is to provide all the hospital's IT needs as well as supporting their clinical and financial systems and applications.

About the Location:

Laramie is located in the southeastern corner of Wyoming, a state noted for its scenic beauty, outdoor activities, and its truly western personality. Home to Wyoming's four-year university, the University of Wyoming provides both cultural and athletic opportunities throughout the year. In addition, the Colorado front range is just to our south offering a host of cities and activities.

About the Department:

Three years ago Ivinson Hospital went live with MEDITECH with the goal of having an integrated HIS for financials as well as clinicals. We are in the middle of a year-long optimization project designed to maximize the usability of the clinical portions of our Client Server version 5.5 installation. To be completed by August, 2010, this project will position the hospital to start an upgrade to version 5.6 in August as well as starting a two-phase Advanced Clinicals / PCM installation.

You will be part of a six-person team tasked with supporting MEDITECH Clinical and Financial applications. In addition, we will bring in additional personnel resources to address specific needs as they arise during these upcoming projects.

Our MEDITECH team is also responsible for assuring that MEDITECH works with the other hospital systems (PACS, Labor & Delivery, etc.). As such, this position will be involved with supporting other applications which interface with MEDITECH.

Position Profile: Clinical Systems Analyst

The Clinical Systems Analyst is primarily responsible for developing and supporting MEDITECH clinical applications and which may involve multiple systems interfacing with MEDITECH. Position will work with other IT staff and end users to assist with implementation of new modules, develop enhanced functionalities, and provide technical and educational support related to MEDITECH clinical modules.

Qualifications:

Bachelors degree required. Nursing degree with clinical experience preferred. Minimum 3 years MEDITECH experience in Client Server environment (5.5 or 5.6 experience preferred). Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with end users on clinical and technical topics. Able to manage multiple assignments and projects.

Position Profile: Financial Systems Analyst

The Financial Systems Analyst is primarily responsible for developing and supporting MEDITECH financial applications at Ivinson Memorial Hospital, Laramie, WY. Work will also involve multiple systems interfacing with MEDITECH. Position will work with end-users to assist with implementation of new modules, develop enhanced functionalities of existing modules, and provide technical and educational support related to MEDITECH financials. Position will work with our Business, Materials Management, Medical Records, Controller, and Human Resources offices.

Qualifications:

Financial experience in healthcare preferred. Minimum 3 years MEDITECH experience in Client Server environment. Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with end-users on financial and technical topics. Able to manage multiple assignments and projects.

How to Apply:

For more information, please contact Medicine Bow Technologies at 307-766-9525 or visit us online at www.medbowtech.com. Applicants should submit resume, cover letter, and three professional references to cbagley@medbowtech.com.

Recent News: Caritas Christi Health Care System to be Acquired by Cerberus Capital Management, L.P.

BOSTON, MA, March 25, 2010 -- Caritas Christi Health Care (“CCHC”) today announced that it has signed an agreement to be acquired by Steward Healthcare System LLC, a newly formed affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (“Cerberus”). This agreement marks the successful completion by CCHC of an extensive process to identify, evaluate and select a capital investor to complete its turnaround and position the system for future growth. Under the terms of the acquisition, CCHC will continue to be managed by its current Massachusetts-based executive team, including President and CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD. The agreement also stipulates that the six Caritas Christi hospitals will retain their Catholic identities, and their existing policies on charitable and pastoral care, community benefits, and approach to labor relations from a social justice perspective. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including approvals from the Massachusetts Attorney General and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, as well as the approval of the Archbishop of Boston.

The transaction will provide the Caritas health care system with approximately $830 million of capital support, including the assumption of all pension obligations for current and former Caritas employees, the repayment of virtually all of the system’s outstanding debt, a significant capital investment to fund operations, and a commitment to approximately $400 million of capital projects, including six major construction projects that will provide immediate upgrades to each of the Caritas Christi hospitals.

“Caritas Christi has a clear vision for the future of the system and is committed to offering world-class medical care and employment opportunities in the communities we serve. We are committed to creating an integrated community-based Accountable Care Organization,” said Dr. de la Torre. “We are striving to further improve the quality of care our patients receive, attract talented new physicians, upgrade and expand the infrastructure at our facilities, maintain or grow our staffing levels and undertake additional investments to further improve the quality of care we provide. In Cerberus, we found an investor that shares our vision and commitment.”

Read article...

Recent News: Summit Healthcare Sees Dramatic Increase in Demand for Meditech 6.0 Integration Engagements in the Second Half of 2009

Hospitals Value Summit Healthcare’s Proven Tools and MEDITECH Expertise for Migration to 6.0 and to Help Them Prepare for Challenges Ahead

BRAINTREE, MA, March 9, 2010 -- Summit Healthcare, a leader in healthcare system integration and task automation, today announced five new agreements signed with hospitals in the second half of 2009. Facilities including Beaufort, South Carolina’s Beaufort Memorial Hospital; Valhalla, New York’s Blythedale Children’s Hospital; Boulder, Colorado’s Boulder Community Hospital; Ithaca, New York’s Cayuga Medical Center; and Plymouth, Massachusetts’ Jordan Hospital have all chosen Summit Healthcare as their sole integration partner as they migrate from their current MEDITECH platforms to MEDITECH 6.0. Summit Healthcare will provide these organizations with its expertise for interface management, data migration and dictionary maintenance to ensure successful, streamlined and secure migrations.

All of the organizations will be implementing various solutions from the Summit Apex product suite to help meet their unique needs during the 6.0 migration and for future initiatives. Blythedale will implement Summit Express Connect to consolidate its interfaces and leverage its feeds for integrating MEDITECH with other vendor systems, and will eventually use Summit Haelthcare’s interface engine to integrate with its physician offices. Beaufort Memorial has entered into an integration outsourcing agreement with the Summit Healthcare Professional Services division to handle all integration management efforts for its migration project.

“As we began working with Summit Healthcare, we quickly realized that there is more to our migration plan than simply application implementation and hardware/infrastructure requirements,” said Ed Ricks, chief information officer at Beaufort Memorial Hospital. “It’s important that we understand our interface landscape and how to successfully integrate systems — including our physician offices — without getting tangled in a web of hundreds of point to point and custom interfaces across multiple vendors. Summit Healthcare’s experience with complex integrations coupled with its successful track record made partnering an easy decision.”

Read article...

Recent News: Iatric Systems Launches a New Web-Based Patient Portal For Secure Access To Electronic Health Information And Bill Pay

New site will interface with Google Health and Microsoft Healthvault

ATLANTA, GA, March 3, 2010 -- Iatric Systems, a leading provider of healthcare software and interface services, today introduced PtAccess, a Web-based portal for patients to securely access personal health information and pay bills online. The program will be offered to hospitals that have implemented health records.

PtAccess provides patients with complete discharge instructions, visit history, clinical results, provider contact information and medication order history. Patients will have the ability to manage their medical history including home medication inventory, surgical and medical history and allergies. PtAccess also provides the opportunity for patients to view and pay hospital bills all from the convenience of one Web site.

“We are very excited about the timing of the release of PtAccess”, said Frank Fortner, senior vice president of Iatric Systems. “The implementation of a patient portal is a strategic way for hospitals to meet many ‘Meaningful Use’ requirements while also meeting their patients’ demands for more control over their health information.”

Read article...

Recent News: Iatric Systems Introduces New Interface Engine to Help Healthcare Systems Achieve Greater Interoperability

Iatric EasyConnect Plus makes it easier to implement, monitor and manage data exchange across multiple internal and external information systems

ATLANTA, GA, March 2, 2010 -- Iatric Systems, a leading provider of healthcare software and interface services, today launched Iatric EasyConnect Plus, a new generation interface engine. Iatric EasyConnect Plus simplifies and reduces the time necessary to implement, manage and monitor interfaces that exchange data across a hospital’s healthcare information network.

In order to effectively transfer data from one facility to another and create interoperability within a health system, hospital IT staffs are frequently faced with connecting hundreds of disparate vendor platforms that have many different interpretations of healthcare industry standards. This is a common and often frustrating challenge for Hospital Information System (HIS) analysts and engineers. Iatric EasyConnect Plus eliminates this headache and saves time by managing and monitoring all interfaces from one easy-to-use, drag and drop graphical user interface and a single support console.

Iatric EasyConnect Plus has experienced great success in early beta testing and is on schedule for full deployment in late Q1, 2010.

Read article...

Recent News: EBSCO Publishing Announces Collaboration with MEDITECH

Evidence-based Information from Patient Education Reference Center™ Available via MEDITECH EMR later in 2010

IPSWICH, MA, March 1, 2010 -- Making sure patients understand their diagnosis and the follow-up that is required is an essential area of patient care and providing accurate, trustworthy patient education is paramount for hospitals. An agreement between MEDITECH and medical content provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) promises to make sure patients leave the emergency room with evidence-based discharge instructions representing the best available medical information.

EBSCO is the provider of Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC), a comprehensive collection of evidence-based discharge instructions and patient education. Under the agreement with MEDITECH, PERC discharge instructions will be accessible via the MEDITECH HealthCare Information System (HCIS) later in 2010. Discharge instructions will be fully integrated into MEDITECH’s Emergency Department Management, Physician Care Manager, Patient Care System, and Oncology applications allowing clinicians to provide patients with the latest, evidence-based information upon discharge. Patients will gain comprehensive, easy-to-understand information regarding all aspects of their care.

Vice President of Marketing for MEDITECH Hoda Sayed-Friel says, “We considered the needs of the hospitals that use our resources, along with the needs of patients, when deciding to work with EBSCO. Our customers place a high priority on having the latest medical evidence available in discharge instruction content. EBSCO has a long-standing reputation as a leader in evidence-based point-of-care resources, and being able to seamlessly integrate Patient Discharge Instruction content into MEDITECH means physicians can be confident they are discharging patients with the information they need.”

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Recent News: New Beacon Partners’ EHR Adoption Survey Reveals Many Will Miss First Meaningful Use Requirement Deadline and Also Believe Deadlines Will be Extended

Survey also reveals that most common hurdle to adoption is lack of internal resources

WEYMOUTH, MA, February 24, 2010 -- Executives from 168 healthcare organizations in the U.S. participated this month in a study from healthcare management consulting firm Beacon Partners, who today revealed the survey results that provide a pulse of where hospitals are in the EHR adoption process.

Overall, the survey revealed that while many healthcare organizations are well into the process of EHR adoption, there are many hurdles to being ready on time in order to achieve and qualify for meaningful use milestones. In fact, 25% of executives did not feel that their healthcare organization would likely fulfill the first meaningful use deadline, and consequently many executives feel that the government will extend meaningful use deadlines.

“Interestingly the study revealed that those healthcare organizations that are getting the highest success rates in terms of customer satisfaction are those in which the physicians are completely engaged and on board with the EHR implementation,” says Ralph P. Fargnoli, Jr., president and CEO of Beacon Partners. “These are the organizations that put emphasis on change management for buy in to their EHR programs from all areas in their organization, and are most likely to achieve success and meaningful use as a result.”

Read article...

Recent News: MEDITECH Announces New Agreements with Clinical Content Vendors

February 11, 2010 -- MEDITECH is moving forward with a new, comprehensive strategy to address clinical content management. We have agreements in place with leading vendors, and are now offering solutions in the following areas:

Patient Discharge Instructions. MEDITECH is offering a collaborative solution with two leading vendors of discharge content: Thomson Reuters Micromedex and EBSCO Publishing. These offerings are designed to work seamlessly within the clinical workflow of the discharge process, and provide patients easy-to-understand information regarding every aspect of their care. This solution will be available later in 2010.

Patient Education. MEDITECH has collaborated with Thomson Reuters Micromedex and PatientEDU to provide evidence-based educational materials which promote patient involvement in every step of the care process.

Order Sets. We have a new order set package offered in conjunction with Zynx Health which is specifically designed to address the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

Read article...

Recent News: The Valley Hospital Chooses the Summit Scripting Toolkit for their Workflow Automation Needs

BRAINTREE, MA, February 12, 2010 -- Summit Healthcare, a leader in healthcare system integration and task automation, today announced a new partnership with The Valley Hospital, a 450 bed full service facility in New Jersey running the MEDITECH platform.

For many years, The Valley Hospital had been using a low cost scripting tool however the more integrated their systems became the more crucial it was to have a product that could streamline workflow, improve processes and ensure reliability with their MEDITECH system. After an extensive evaluation and search process, The Valley Hospital will be implementing the Summit Scripting Toolkit. The Summit Scripting Toolkit can be leveraged across the hospital enterprise to assist The Valley Hospital with eliminating time consuming and manual tasks that plague many departments.

Initially, the Summit Scripting Toolkit will be leverage in the business office to assist with manual billing and administrative tasks such as updates to the B/AR charge master dictionary. Additionally, there are plans to utilize scripting to assist with Pharmacy drug dictionary maintenance as it relates to pricing and NDC code management. They also plan to eliminate the manual processes in place for their nightly routines which will free up FTE’s and allow them to be reallocated to other priority projects.

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Recent News: Picis Signs 83 Major Customer Contracts in ‘09 for its High Acuity Solutions

Adds 30 new Integrated Delivery Networks, representing 64 new healthcare facilities, to client list while expanding business to existing customers

WAKEFIELD, MA, February 9, 2010 -- Picis today announced that despite the economy and an uncertain regulatory environment, 2009 was a banner year for the company. Eighty-three health systems selected Picis CareSuite® high-acuity care information solutions — evenly split between existing customers expanding their investments in Picis technology, and organizations implementing Picis solutions for the first time. This new business consists of approximately 30 integrated delivery networks (IDNs), representing 64 healthcare facilities in North America, and several large international contracts.

Picis reported success across all product lines in its clinical information systems portfolio for the emergency department (ED), intensive care unit (ICU) and operating room (OR). The number of customers using Picis LYNX™ revenue management solutions doubled in 2009 as compared to 2008 with strong momentum from hospitals adding or integrating these tools to help preserve revenue and avoid leakage for reimbursable services at the point-of-care.

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Worth a Read: Articles of Interest to the Healthcare IT Field