On August 5 at the National Press Club in Washington, ThedaCare, a system of four hospitals, 25 ambulatory clinics and a large outpatient behavior health center in Northeast Wisconsin, announced it will meet all current meaningful use standards by the end of 2011 through extensive training of both employed ThedaCare physicians and independent community physicians. ThedaCare believes these guidelines are important in defining how electronic health information can improve healthcare in Wisconsin and throughout the country.
Sponsored by Health Affairs and Brandeis University, the event included many leaders representing insurers, providers, pharmaceuticals manufacturers who described what they are going to do differently based on the recently published “meaningful use” guidelines. Patients also shared their experiences related to the benefits of Electronic Health Records (EHR).
The implementation of these guidelines is complex, and ThedaCare has invested about $2.5 million annually in staffing and operating EHR since 1996. Despite being listed among the “Most Wired” organizations in America for the past nine years, ThedaCare is still implementing some components of the EHR, like computer physician order management (CPOM). We are working to educate and engage physicians about the necessity of the EHR in managing patient care more effectively. The goal is to convince physicians the EHR and CPOM are simply further tools to drive continuous improvement.
The difference at Thedacare is that we combine the EHR tools with the ability to fundamentally redesign care processes, and then use the EHR to support those changes. The fact is we have a long way to go before all the clinical care processes can be redesigned. We don’t want to transition from a wasteful paper process to the same wasteful process, only now electronic.
In our experience, physicians more readily embrace EHR and its accompanying changes when paired with a new design and care process that clearly delivers better, efficient care. EHR is an important aspect of our redesigned Collaborative Care inpatient unit, for example. The unit has produced zero medication reconciliation errors for three years in a row, with close to a 30 percent reduction in cost. Doctors decide the merits of EHR based on final outcomes data like this, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise. We have taken our time to implement components of the EHR to be sure that it supports this critical work.
The EHR is a tool and, as with other important tools like stethoscopes and CT scans, an appropriate set of clinical care processes and training is required to enable better patient outcomes. This is ultimately what meaningful use is attempting to deliver, and we are eager to move forward to meet its standards.
