The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) with more than 1,400 members representing Chief Information Officers and other top information technology executives at hospitals and clinics across the country held their second Capitol Hill Public Policy Forum on April 30, 2014 on Capitol Hill.
Opening the event, Sharon Canner, Sr. Director, Congressional Affairs for CHIME, announced the release of CHIME’s Case Study “When it Matters: Improving Care Delivery and Patient Outcomes through Technology” published April 2014.
The case study describes how Sutter Care at Home a California-based not-for-profit home care and hospice agency equipped caregivers with tablet computers to improve access to information and to coordinate care among its mobile workforce. The study describes in detail how transitioning to tablets speeds up the care process, helps improve wound care, and orders medical supplies more efficiently.
CHIME CEO Russ Branzell as moderator for the event, highlighted how vital it is to navigate the world of health IT so that the transformation of healthcare will enable our society to move forward and develop new models of care to reduce costs and improve quality and safety.
Six expert panelists discussed how technology is changing, how their organizations operate, and the challenges that they face now and in the coming years. Presenters and topics in the spotlight included:
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Michael Martz CIO at Meadville Medical Center in Meadville, PA discussed how the Medical Center’s unique health coaching program visits patients on a weekly or biweekly basis. So far, the health coaches have visited 500 patients where 78 percent are on Medicaid. He sees telehealth wrapped into the coaching program with video conferencing on the agenda
- Skip Hubbard, SVP of Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement at Bon Secours Health System Inc. in Marriottsville MD, presented a picture of how their patient portal operates effectively with 113, 000 active and 10,000 mobile application users. In addition, 2000 patient specific messages are sent through the portal with 80,000 messages received from patients
- Neal Ganguly, VP and CIO at JFK Health System in Edison NJ represents a community hospital operating with 900 physicians with one to three physicians in each practice. At JFK, the number of physicians adopting EHRs is low and must change. He isn’t seeing a big response to calls for telehealth at his hospital.
- Liz Johnson, VP of Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corporation in Dallas TX led the EHR implementations at Tenet hospitals and heads the system’s IMPACT Program, an initiative that uses clinical operations leaders and trains them in technology and workflow improvement. As a member of the ONC Standards Committee, she emphasized how important it is to develop standards able to communicate in the same language
- Pam McNutt, Senior VP and CIO at Methodist Health System in Dallas TX reports that technology is used to check drug interactions and drug allergies when medications are ordered and uses barcode enabled bedside medication administration at all facilities
- Randy McCleese, VP of Information Services and CIO at St Claire Regional Medical Center in Morehead KY that has been performing telemedicine consultations since 1995 and became a telemedicine hub site in 1998. The medical center has had good success with EHRs for patients receiving care in eleven counties. It takes substantial funding to initiate technology and the installation of systems can’t be pushed to do more in less time
Other general thoughts from the panelists at the forum:
- More physicians need to get engaged in the meaningful use program
- Patients that use the health system portal before they go to the hospital tend to have better results
- HIEs can be competitive with other systems
- There are limitations in using technology
- The amount of data today is massive
- Dealing with privacy and security is essential
- The use of hybrid devices is a new challenge
- Incomplete data is safer than using the wrong data
- There is a need for a longer term roadmap for future direction
- Behavioral health patient information must be included in the EHR
- Sometimes it is difficult to get data into HIEs
- Population health needs to be a major focus
For more information, go to www.cio-chime.org.