As electronic health records get broader adoption, smaller health systems are realizing that the big, one-size-fits-all approach offered by the likes of Epic and Cerner may not be appropriate for them.
One that embarked on a journey to build an EHR from scratch is Holy Name Medical Center, 360-bed hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey.
“One of the main reasons we decided to build out our own EHR system is that many of the big-box EHR systems are not adaptable to small hospitals,” said Jessica Cox, director of product solutions at the health system and a registered nurse. “These large, out-of-the-box systems just do not work with small operations.”
Cerner and Epic Systems are often touted for their ability to simplify or eliminate paperwork, make operations more efficient and make interactions with patients more effective. Instead, many doctors and practitioners have complained that the current systems are not adaptable to their needs, and that they spend more time documenting every step they take, leading to burnout.
For Cox, a central priority during the EHR upgrade process was to review how patient centric Epic or Cerner’s products were as well as find greater alignment with what physicians needed in an EHR, something that has been sorely lacking in the current crop of electronic records.
“We had the luxury of having the software developers follow our clinicians, learn what they do and develop workflows on what an actual day is like,” Cox said. “From there, they would come back every couple of weeks to see what worked and what didn’t.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Holy Name Medical Center used Medicomp Systems, based in Chantilly, Virginia, as a partner in creating the new EHR system. Currently, the system use Medicomp’s software for clinical documentation and assessments,
Medicomp’s chief executive officer, echoed Cox’s criticism of major EHR systems
“Most major EHR systems are designed for improving transaction and billing. They are not designed to always be user friendly,” said David Lareau.
As more and more EHR systems are moving to the cloud, Lareau said the future of EHR and clinical work is going to become more customizable for each health system.
“We helped to provide the tools to Holy Name, so they could customize their workflows, while they use a community wide approach to access information on their system,” he said.
The entire project took about two and a half years from concept to implementation, Cox said. The system has been fully active for approximately seven months, but the health system executive declining to reveal how much the project cost. Already doctors, nurses, staff and the hospital leadership are excited about how user friendly Harmony EHR – the name of the EHR – is.
“We have seen improvements of the tracking of patients through the system, improvement in KPI’s and throughput. We are still monitoring the time it takes to bill and receive reimbursement,” Cox said. “We have been hearing that the new system is nice, neat, clean and simple to use. It allows our doctors to spend more time with their patients and less time typing things into the computer.”
She added that clinicians could “quickly access the patient- and diagnosis-specific data they need at the point of care for informed decision-making, which helps increase efficiencies and productivity, improve clinical outcomes, enhance care coordination, and reduce burnout-fueling stress
The next step is to offer the EHR system to other small hospitals, health districts, doctors’ practices and more. Cox did not have a specific timeline on when it would be rolled out.
Photo: invincible_bulldog, Getty Images
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the EHR’s capabilities.
