4 Key Considerations for Paper-Based Hospitals Looking to Go Electronic
Written by Jaimie Oh | September 28, 2010
Tags: Auxilio | best practices | electronic health records | Joseph Flynn
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, healthcare providers are able to qualify for incentive payments upon adopting and demonstrating meaningful use of healthcare information technology, particularly electronic health records. In light of this, hospitals are scrambling to deploy electronic information systems in increasing numbers in order to meet requirements set by the Department of Health & Human Services in time for incentive payments to be doled out in 2011. Joseph Flynn, CEO of Auxilio, a managed print services company that has worked with numerous hospitals, discusses four key considerations hospital executives at paper-based hospitals should be mindful of before deploying these systems.
1. Understand the print infrastructure before entering an electronic one. Mr. Flynn says hospitals often misunderstand the concept of deploying an electronic system. He adds they should be mindful that although EHRs will certainly provide many benefits, they should not be naïve about the savings in paper supplies they may seek through making health records electronic.
"If you look at a 350-bed hospital, there are approximately 2.5 million documents being printed in that hospital and only 20-25 percent is related to medical records," he says. "The overwhelming majority of documents that are being printed are reports, emails, articles, anything an executive may need for a board meeting or department meetings. Hospital CEOs have the false expectation they are going to save money on paper."
2. Going electronic requires significant expenses. Hospitals should expect to invest a significant amount of money in implementing electronic systems at their facilities. In addition to up-front costs in buying the systems, costs related to deploying these systems include hiring more staff for IT support and trial-period expenses.
"What hospital executives need to know if that, even if they have the funds to deploy a system, it takes time for those systems to be fully integrated," Mr. Flynn says. "Many of these implementations go through a testing period so paper volume may actually spike."
3. Set up a workflow that works efficiently on an electronic level. Although the majority of a hospital's paper forms, if not all, can easily transition from being paper-based to electronic, Mr. Flynn emphasizes the need for hospitals to implement a workflow that makes the adoption of electronic records efficient and organized.
"My company has clients that have 10,000 different forms for all different kinds of things, so the business of ordering forms should be the first area that hospitals can begin to make electronic," he says. "But those hospitals need repositories within their networks to make sure those forms are being sent to the right place when hospital physicians or staff members need them. That's where a hospital's IT needs to get involved and work with different EHR platforms."
4. Understand the potential for resistance. Although the concept of EHRs has been around for quite some time, the general public and even hospital physicians and employees are known to express concern over the adoption of EHRs. Mr. Flynn says being mindful of the resistance to going electronic may help hospitals better understand how to make EHRs more patient- and efficiency-centered. He adds hospitals should be not underestimate the time it takes to really start seeing widespread acceptance of EHRs.
"You have to think about the customer," he says. "The people that are coming in and out of hospitals are from a generation that is comfortable with having a paper form of their medical records. It will be difficult trying to change the culture in this country of now having to download their medical record or work with a chip. That's going to take a lot of time and effort."
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