NeoTool — Singular Focus, Healthcare Integrated

Posted in EHR, Healthcare IT

Health Data Management published an article entitled CIO: Get the Workflow Right First. At the Medical Group Management Association Conference, Phyllis Schuck, CIO of Pinehurst Surgical Clinic, spoke about their EHR implementation experience and highlighted that the key tip is to focus on your workflows first. As she stated, “Technology really doesn’t fix broken processes, but it can magnify broken processes.”

Focusing on your workflow is critical to any healthcare IT project or initiative. Once the workflow is documented and understood, then determining how technology can be applied to streamline it, increase its capacity, or otherwise improve it can be determined.

Other tips offered by this CIO should be applied in evaluating healthcare software purchase decisions, whether it is an EHR or healthcare integration platform. The tips include:

• Only consider vendors who’ve been in business at least seven years, so they have a track record.
• Make sure the vendor has successfully deployed interfaces to the practice management and lab systems in place at your practice.
• When hosting demonstrations of software at your practice, require the vendor to demonstrate how the application would handle your specific workflows.
• Schedule site visits to organizations similar to yours, and bring multiple users from various departments, such as nurses, schedulers and cashiers.

Last 5 posts by Jon Mertz

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• HL7 Continuity of Care Document Quick Start Guide - June 12th, 2008