You can love it, hate it, fear it or revere it … but technology has become an integral part of healthcare processes on both a clinical and operational level. Therefore, you might as well learn to optimize it.
That was a key part of the message Chris Miller, principal with Nashville-based Cumberland Consulting Group, and Deb Dulac, director of PRISM and business systems for the University of Vermont Medical Center, shared with audiences at the recent HIMSS15 Annual Conference & Exhibition. More than 38,000 professionals flocked to Chicago last month to attend the premier health information technology conference, which included more than 300 peer-reviewed education sessions, vendor exhibits touting the latest technology options, updates on government regulations impacting the industry and keynote speakers ranging from Bruce Broussard, president and CEO of Humana, to George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States of America.
“Over the past five years, there has been a huge shift towards technology largely because of the HITECH Act of 2009 and government programs like Meaningful Use that have helped drive the technology in healthcare,” Miller said. Although slower to adopt technology into daily operations – particularly in a clinical setting – than many other industries, healthcare has increasingly been pressed to take an ‘all in’ stance.
Miller noted that over the last few years, technology has fundamentally changed the way providers … both large and small … operate. He added the challenge is balancing the adoption of technology with everything that brings.
“Today anything a healthcare organization wants to change in a business or clinical process requires a change in their technology, and likewise, any change in their technology has an impact on the care they provide or their revenue,” he said. “I think healthcare entities were used to thinking of technology as a separate entity, but now it’s so intertwined,” added the Atlanta-based HIT expert.
In their HIMSS presentation, Miller said he and Dulac focused on how to manage and optimize technology now that it has become so pervasive, while at the same time accounting for all the other changes happening in healthcare including a switchover to ICD-10, meeting ongoing and new Meaningful Use requirements, actively engaging patients, supporting accountable care models, and the myriad other programs that require attention.
The bottom line is that thinking of each of these mandates or initiatives as individual tasks to conquer leads to madness … or at least extreme frustration. Instead, Miller said the question should be, “How can organizations effectively manage all of those together with a higher degree of efficiency and lower overall cost?”
He continued, “When I think implementation, somewhere between 25-30 percent of the time spent on these changes is spent on testing so if you can group – effectively overlap testing on these programs – you can significantly save time.”
More than just testing, though, Miller said very deliberately grouping initiatives under a single governance project structure helps with a range of other issues from interoperability to simplification for end users. “Being able to group things together almost makes it irrelevant as to what changes were made,” he said of the finished product in the minds of those actually using the technology.
The ‘ripping off the bandage’ approach means one educational update for those end users as opposed to having to create an educational module for each individual initiative. Not only does a rolling schedule of changes often feel more overwhelming, but also the time away from desks learning the new processes would typically be less under a grouping structure than to have 10 separate trainings for 10 separate initiatives.
Miller was quick to admit that creating overarching technology structures could be difficult without staff or contracted expertise, which makes it more problematic for small practices.
“Whether you see it as a good or bad thing, there’s certainly a lot of consolidation in the market. Small private practices are becoming more and more rare,’ he said. “I think one of the reasons is it’s becoming increasingly difficult for groups like that to manage all these changes.”
Miller added larger practices or health systems enjoy the economies of scale that make it easier to incorporate the rapid number of changes taking place. However, he added that in addition to HIT consultants, software vendors typically also offer at least some assistance in helping clients assimilate new processes into their workflow.
“Managing technology is only getting more complex,” he concluded. “Organizations need to be intentional and strategic in how they do that … whether that’s implementing analytics platforms, system upgrades, system optimization, Meaningful Use programs, or ICD-10. They need to be looking at ways they can consolidate those initiatives to be more effective with their resources and increase the return on their technology investment.”

TAGS: HIT, Health Information Technology, HIMSS15, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Optimization, Chris Miller, Cumberland Consulting Group, Deb Dulac, Technology Governance Structure, Meaningful Use, ICD-10, Population Management, Patient Engagement, Accountable Care Models

PHOTOS: Chris Miller, Principal with Cumberland Consulting Group

WEB: cumberlandcg.com