One of the first steps Memorial Healthcare in Owosso, MI took when they were deciding to unify their EHR with MEDITECH Expanse was to closely examine integrations, workflows, and day-to-day interactions from providers to patients across the care continuum.
On The CereCore Podcast, Thomas Kurtz, Ph.D., Chief Administrative Officer at Memorial Healthcare, walks Phil Sobol, Vice President of Business Development at CereCore, through their decision-making process and key moments in their journey to “one EHR”.
Looking back on your decision to have a consolidated MEDITECH Expanse platform across both acute and ambulatory services, what were some of the discussions and thought processes that prompted Memorial to head down that path?
“What we had found is, even though they were very tightly integrated, it wasn't really truly a single patient record,” Kurtz said.
“There were things that were missing. There was documentation that couldn't be accessed from one side or the other. There wasn't that seamless communication between referring provider or consultant on the inpatient side to the primary care on the outpatient side.”
He explained that the integration from ER visit to the inpatient stay and then back to primary care, home health, and hospice really allowed care providers to have a holistic understanding of the patient's experience throughout the care continuum.
“That holistic patient record not only impacted the clinicians’ ability to make good decisions because of that holistic care, or data, but also impacted the patients as well. By having that singular patient record, they can see all aspects of every visit that they've had at Memorial under that one patient portal,” Kurtz explained.
Has Memorial been able to see some of the benefits of moving to that singular patient record across both the ambulatory and acute side?
“You know we have and some of those were immediate -- for example in lab. This is a very specific example. Orders in lab being tied to results coming back and making sure that the providers can see that their patients are within compliance. I mean that was an easy, big win. The order instantaneously was resulted and there was no second-guessing,” Kurtz shared.
Were there any challenges that came up during this large EHR implementation project and any recommendations that you would have for others as they begin to look at a similar project for their healthcare organization?
"We could build an entire podcast series around that question. It's very complex,” Kurtz laughed.
“It was clearly evident to us that we did not have the volume of resources necessary to be successful in an EMR implementation, while keeping the wheels on the bus,” he said.
Kurtz went on to discuss the growth that Memorial experienced in their implementation year and the year after go live. They recognized the need for outside expertise in order to successfully implement MEDITECH Expanse – and that’s where CereCore brought years of experience and an operator’s perspective.
Listen to this conversation on The CereCore Podcast
Talking points:
- Why pursue a singular EHR and the immediate benefits to patient care
- Resources and experience needed for large-scale EHR implementations
- Decisions behind the big bang approach to implementing MEDITECH Expanse in the Ambulatory and Acute settings
- Long-term vision for continuing to optimize their EHR
- Parting advice for healthcare IT leaders and how to overcome the “because we’ve always done it that way” mindset
Read the transcript
Related to this episode
Download these ebooks to find budget considerations, discussion guides, and readiness checklists for MEDITECH Expanse.
If you are searching for the most effective way to manage your MEDITECH infrastructure or you are comparing cloud and hosting options, download The Buyer’s Guide to MEDITECH Hosting.
