By Nathan Koske | Aug 9, 2024
Congratulations – if you’re considering EHR optimization, that likely means you have a recent go-live behind you and now you’re looking forward to what’s next. Modern EHRs are significant investments that constantly change and require ongoing maintenance and improvement to realize value and benefits for patient care, satisfaction and hospital operations. How can your optimization efforts be strategic ones? Let's examine key ingredients for successful MEDITECH EHR optimization so your healthcare organization can be prepared for the transition and understand the components of this ongoing lifecycle.
When to start optimization
Optimizations are typically most successful when they are started one to two months post Go-LIVE. Even if you are in the midst of an EHR implementation, it’s not too early to start making plans for optimization. Organizations often simply can’t fit everything into an implementation, really making optimization efforts something to consider from the start.
Regardless of the type of optimization you are planning for, it is important to give your users sufficient time to become familiar with the product as well as wind down from the grueling process of going LIVE with a new MEDITECH environment.
Your new EHR offers capabilities that may spark ideas and clinicians may have a new lens to explore what’s possible and how that can improve workflows and patient care. This adjustment period is important in helping users realize what is needed instead of reacting to what was just different from their previous system.
The population of data into the live system is another big factor into that adjustment period. Simply put, some things you can’t optimize until the data and/or workflows exist. After the first month or so of use, users will also be able to identify which workflows actually need to be evaluated for improvement versus functionality that may benefit from more education. Honing in on workflows that need to be improved will go far in yielding value in your optimization efforts.
Where to begin with optimization
Conduct a formal assessment of your MEDITECH environment as a first step in launching an optimization project. Review the system and workflows and gather feedback from everyday users within a formal process.
Need help conducting this assessment? CereCore can help.
Here are some starting points for this process:
Determine priority and define a strategic roadmap
A thorough assessment of your EHR could produce optimization documents with a significant number of findings. Frankly, the results may be overwhelming to leaders and project team members. Don’t get discouraged—it’s natural for modern EHR implementations to need optimization.
Prioritizing the assessment findings will require strategic decisions, but in the end, your organization should walk away with a roadmap that will guide optimization projects and future investments.
For example, you may need to weigh the benefit of certain optimization items based on whether it could improve physician productivity or just make life easier for clinical staff. Or, it could make sense to prioritize an optimization that would generate revenue because a manual process wasn’t leading to consistent revenue capture. Patient safety or potential regulatory compliance items are usually high impact items to consider, too.
During the assessment prioritization review, the leadership team could decide to attack all high priority findings or those identified as “low-hanging fruit” as a way to make quick progress. It is often beneficial to break down the level of effort by service line or department to prevent putting too much strain on areas of your healthcare system.
Finally, be prepared to have conversations with your board and key stakeholders about the additional investment (time and money) that will be needed to move forward with optimization efforts. The strategic roadmap that results from the EHR assessment and optimization prioritization session will depict that value that can be realized by providers, clinicians and staff with consistent fine-tuning and maintenance of the EHR.
Kickoff optimization projects
Once you have tackled your optimization roadmap, it’s time to kick off the optimization phase of your EHR journey. Here are a few things to help you make your optimizations a reality:
Final questions to consider
Our team has assisted health care organizations of all sizes with their optimization efforts. So let me pose a few final questions to you as you consider the idea that optimization is just part of the ongoing lifecycle of having a modern EHR.
Bottom Line: Keys to Success
More resources on optimization
Director, MEDITECH Professional Services, CereCore
Director, MEDITECH Professional Services, CereCore
This article and video interview were originally published on Healthcare IT Today “EMR Optimization is a Continuous Process”.
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