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A recent Wall Street Journal Health Blog post addressed a growing complaint in the industry: that deadlines for digitizing medical records are “too much, too soon.” I’ve worked hand in hand with a range of hospitals – from some of the country’s largest IDNs to smaller, community-based hospitals – that are knee-deep in preparations for the myriad of “meaningful use” requirements set in 2011, and while I can report that healthcare organizations are at varying degrees of readiness, that is not my utmost concern.
Most likely, the meaningful use deadlines as they stand today will be met in part by some, missed by others. However, while the deadline debate is certainly part of the story, the oversight of the emergency department (ED) within the guidelines is criminal. Take the following information into account:
Today we welcome guest blogger Geoff Brown, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Inova Health System, a nonprofit hospital system based in Falls Church, Va. that includes six hospitals and fields approximately 400,000 emergency room visits annually. We tapped Geoff for his thoughts on a common debate in HIS circles: Will hospital-wide HIT oust specialty systems?
Many hospital CIOs are facing a similar question: will house-wide hospital information systems (HIS) reign supreme, or is there still a place for specialty systems? We faced this very question at Inova Health Systems and found that, while a house-wide information system is important to the overall flow of data, a hybrid approach with specialized departmental systems that support the workflow and interoperate with our core HIS met our needs.
At Inova, our busy emergency departments and free-standing emergency care centers were central to our decision to supplement our HIS with specialty systems. Most CIOs would agree that an ED has different IT needs than other departments – from decision-making support to complicated levels of documentation required for reimbursement – and these needs require specific functionality that not all systems provide. Furthermore, EDs are fast-paced and highly stressful environments that represent the front door of a hospital, a gateway for the rest of the building and the hub from which many diagnostic decisions are made and patients are funneled to different departments. One size fits all in some areas, but one built for admissions would not be the best for physicians or patients.
