What does it look like when application managed services providers with healthcare operations expertise are responsible for the maintenance, support and enhancement of your Oracle Health EHR? Many AMS providers focus on technical maintenance and lack the deep clinical workflow expertise to offer strategic guidance around optimization and interoperability, limited support for analytics, and lack the understanding to prioritize updates that impact compliance. That leaves hospital IT leaders hard-pressed to find extra capacity and resources for problem resolutions, testing, integration, and related AMS duties – often covering tasks in-house or coordinating with multiple vendors. What follows is a review of problems CereCore has helped our clients navigate through application management services – offering expanded capacity and healthcare operations expertise that improves the delivery of patient care.
Problem: Our client was experiencing issues with Troponin collection labels not following the patient when they transferred from the Emergency Department to inpatient care units, causing delays in subsequent collections.
How We Helped: We created timer-based rules in Oracle Health (Cerner) that initiated from the original order and expired 30 min prior to the next collection time so the most up to date patient location would be used to direct labels to the appropriate printer and alert staff of the timed collection.
Result: Implementation of rules helped improve timely completion of 3-part troponin orders (0-1-3 or 0-2-4) hours). Adherence to the timing leads to improved patient care and Cardiac Certifications program compliance requiring collections in as little as 10 minutes for some clinical considerations.
Problem: Our client was experiencing issues with efficiency and regulatory compliance given the variation in laboratory roles across a multi-hub domain. This led to regulatory concerns associated with access permissions for PathNet positions.
How We Helped: We assisted with auditing all laboratory positions and their corresponding application group access. The goal was to identify and resolve any potential compliance issues and return to a standard set of enterprise roles with a reduction in role-based exceptions. The project included identifying updates needed, obtaining client approvals and validating completion of the changes made by the client’s laboratory services team.
Result: Uniform access for each hub’s PathNet positions was achieved and our auditing approach continues to be a key part of this client’s laboratory support model.
Problem: Our client needed to identify and correct non-compliance to ensure accordance with MQSA standards for mammography letters and results.
How We Helped: We planned, developed, and implemented a script to update mammography documents for patients in accordance with the MQSA mandates for including performing location address as necessary on new letter and result templates. We worked with Oracle Health to validate address compliance.
Result: Per regulatory compliance requirements, each location’s address appears on patient letters and results. Before the script, a facility address, rather than the location where the service was performed, was included on the letters creating a non-compliant situation.
Problem: Our client was concerned about mitigating risks and forecasting resource needs to enhance surgical performance and improve patient outcomes.
How We Helped: We analyzed data and created reports needed to track performance metrics such as patient outcomes, complication rates, and length of stay.
Results: Our client uses the reports for actionable insights that have improved surgical outcomes, reduced errors and increased operational efficiency. Our evaluation of processes including patient flow and cost analysis is informing roadmaps for integration of new technologies such as robotic surgery and surgical simulation tools.
When a hospital evaluates application management services (AMS), there are multiple factors to consider. None is more important than deep expertise in your EHR combined with experience in healthcare operations and clinical context. This provides capabilities that go beyond general EHR or IT support and can indicate if your AMS provider can handle incident resolution as well as proactive system improvements, support SQL queries and advanced analytics, coordinate change control processes, support third-parties and much more. Transformation projects require capacity and expertise that AMS can provide. This alignment frees in-house staff to support core competencies and strategic transformation and to partner for what keeps them functioning at the top of their license.