by
Olga Deshchenko, DOTmed News Reporter | February 11, 2011
From the January/February 2011 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Other meaningful use hurdles
While most major facilities have already faced the CPOE “beast,” some issues remain with a few other required stage one features. The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio has been using EHRs since 2008 and has a high CPOE adoption rate. But it’s running into difficulties with another requirement – maintaining a problem list for more than 80 percent of all patients.
The Christ Hospital uses EHRs on both the hospital and the physician ambulatory practice sides. The ambulatory group has traditionally used problem lists, while inpatient physicians have not embraced the concept — it’s situations like this where the inconsistency of this physician documentation requirement poses a problem. “That was something we didn’t really push in 2008 when we initially went live,” says Alex Vaillancourt, the hospital’s vice president and CIO.
To establish regular use of problem lists, the hospital simply asked its physicians to use the feature. The conversations have helped, says Vaillancourt; doctors weren’t resistant to using problem lists — oftentimes they just forgot they were there.
Phoenix Children’s Hospital is also looking to address some components of physician documentation, as well as a few additional modules procured from the vendor for quality measures. “Even though we can extract data from an EMR and submit it, it has to be through the certified EHR,” says Vaidya.
Other facilities are working to ensure a smooth transition to an EHR system. Iowa Health System, the state’s largest integrated health system, is currently in the process of implementing a new EHR. Before settling on a vendor (Epic Systems), it interviewed about 600 physicians and staff members across its facilities. The move towards EHRs is a change in physician workflow, and like any change, can be disruptive. “We wanted to make sure that the disruption [was offset by] value,” says Joy Grosser, the health system’s CIO.
In terms of meaningful use, Grosser cites the health information exchange as one of the biggest challenges. “One of the stumbling blocks is trying to get to that point where health information exchange is routine, so we’re able to share information across settings,” she says.
Iowa Health System is focusing on adoption and striving to demonstrate the benefits of the electronic system to every user who comes across it. “IT doesn’t care for patients. We’re just trying to support people who do,” says Grosser.
