How a Clinically-led EHR Migration Can Make Data Abstraction a Non-invasive Process

Implementing a new EHR is an increasingly difficult process for healthcare institutions. Adding to it is another hurdle of migrating data and records from an old EHR system to a new one like Cerner, Epic, or others. It becomes incredibly difficult and time-consuming to filter, check, and transfer data from traditional medical record keeping methods to a new, advanced EHR system. The problems that generally arise with migrating from an existing system stem from compatibility, duplicates, or different codes/forms. 

Successful data migration requires proper planning and expert support with healthcare IT experience to seamlessly transfer records and data. However, what is the exact cost of spending resources, time, and effort in the data migration process? 

Why Data Matters to Clinicians and Patients

Electronic Health Records and substantiating data that go along with them have steadily become a very large concept in the minds of the public; it works as a cohesive document that in a single eyeshot, disperses pertinent information and stats. Everyone can easily recognize some of the ways their data can be important, but for healthcare institutions that data can be life-changing. 

Some examples of useful and relevant EHR data include:

  • Accurate Problem Lists
  • Demographics
  • Histories
  • Allergies
  • Current Medications
  • Lab Results
  • Immunizations

There’s so much information about every single patient which is critically important to the physician serving them. Even social determinants like, “the conditions of the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect an individual’s level of health risks,” are important when looking at the big picture of a patient’s health. Physicians are required to keep track of all this data and even more such as insurance plans and visits to other healthcare institutions.

EHRs help manage all this data and allow physicians to use this data in even more impactful ways. Analytic systems built into EHRs can help physicians see things they might normally miss or automatically push for certain tests based on the available data. Vast amounts of data can be an intimidating variable when it comes to transitioning to a new EHR system though.

EHR Migration: Moving Data Efficiently and Effectively

The most daunting task for a healthcare institution when digitizing systems is the migration of data from an old EHR system to a new system like Cerner or Epic. Some hospitals and institutions opt for a fresh start all together, foregoing data migration and not transferring all of their existing data into the new EHR system. This results in both patients and physicians losing out on significant value and insights from medical data. Naturally, medical providers lose optimal functionality of the EHR software and it becomes more expensive than migrating systems due to all of the value lost from customers.

To make this process smooth and non-disruptive to allow health institutions to operate and grow their businesses with their data strategy, ReMedi helps to plan out all of the strategic steps of EHR migration. We make sure that ability or cost don’t become limiting factors when evaluating the implementation of a new EHR system and process.

Here are just a few of the benefits of working with ReMedi to migrate data to a new EHR:

  • Eliminate the burden of switching back and forth from EHR to legacy system
  • Meet all quality guidelines and regulatory compliance
  • Find information, electronically perform tasks, and prescribe more efficiently and easier
  • Reduce errors from out-dated, missing, or duplicate data
  • Greener than traditional systems or keeping multiple systems

Another important reason for migrating data forward to a new EHR is that more healthcare institutions are exchanging data regularly for patients that visit multiple healthcare providers. This means every healthcare institution requires a reliable and compatible EHR system to facilitate exchanging data without errors that could cause detriment to the patient.

ReMedi’s team of Physicians and clinicians lead you and your organization across the EHR finish line with empathy.

There is a lot of planning and resources involved with EHR implementation and data migration. ReMedi’s leadership and EHR consultants come from a clinical background, and have experience that can help healthcare institutions better understand the opportunities that arise from an innovative approach to EHR data.

ReMedi’s core EHR team are physicians first, so they understand exactly how EHRs and data migration affect physicians directly. 

ReMedi’s approach to EHR data migration is to develop and provide strategic and supportive services to augment and assist healthcare staff based on specific project characteristics, goals, challenges that the healthcare organization faces. From timing and budget to the manpower necessary to review and abstract all records, ReMedi improves all aspects of the EHR along the way. With access to a ReMedi IT support team, institutions of all sizes are able to migrate their data promptly and support their staff during critical moments of patient care.

A critical component of data migration is filtering the medical records; deciding how to organize them for migration and ensuring older codes and forms will be properly migrated and work within the new system. This is also the best time to clean up records by scrubbing duplicate or outdated records, checking for errors, and other valuable data cleaning measures to ensure old problems are not going into the new system.

ReMedi has over 15 years of experience with developing and implementing multiple EHR systems across medical systems of all sizes. We ensure the highest accuracy and compliance when migrating EHR records. Successful data migration alone does not simply translate to overall provider growth and patient satisfaction. ReMedi helps implement ambulatory workflows and scenarios to ensure all medical services are correctly and properly supported with EHR data and processes that provide patients more value. ReMedi continues to serve its mission of impacting healthcare providers positively and helping healthcare institutions go above and beyond with their EHR strategy.

If you’d like to connect with one of our experienced EHR Physicians or EHR consultants, send us a message at info@remedihs.com.

In-house vs. Outsourcing: The Benefits of a Chart Abstraction Service

This article was originally published on LinkedIn by ReMedi’s Chief Revenue Officer, Scott Collins. 

Sometimes you have to let go. As an entrepreneur, business leader, and a father, it took the longest time in all three roles to figure out that maybe, just maybe I was holding on too tight to the daily minutia of my role. As an entrepreneur I wanted to make all of the decisions regarding the direction of the companies I founded, as a business leader I could take on my role and everyone else’s just because I needed it to get done, and as a father, well… I’m still learning.

When it comes to healthcare organizations taking on new or existing projects, I’ve experienced similar sentiments. I’ve heard phrases such as “my team can handle that” or “we do that in-house”. This is no discredit to the leaders in our industry or the faith that we have in our teams’ capabilities, but rather a nod to today’s staffing shortages, increase in employee burnout, and the rising cost of resources.

Outsourcing services is nothing new to healthcare – but it is more important today than ever. For example, let’s talk clinical data/chart abstraction. When acquiring or merging with other healthcare entities, or even transitioning to a new EHR system, healthcare organizations have the skillsets, know-how, and overall expertise within the four walls to provide chart abstraction in-house. This seems to be the smarter, more affordable, and most convenient option. But that’s not necessarily true. Enlisting the help of a clinical abstraction service can provide more complete and accurate patient charts without placing any additional burden on your clinicians.

The end result – making an acquisition or EHR transition more efficient and often at a lower cost than managing the process on your own.

Less burden on clinicians

Clinician burnout is at an all-time high. We are not just speaking of physicians, but our nurses as well. Clinicians are committed to providing the best care possible and if that means completing or correcting patient charts at home, many will do it. But is that really in the best interest of your organization, healthcare staff, or patients? Probably not. A little more personal time goes a long way for morale and better patient care.

More accurate, timely patient data

By outsourcing your chart abstraction to a clinically experienced team, providers find the information they need when they need it, allowing the best delivery for quality care. Clinicians don’t feel like they are rushing to access accurate data into the patient chart (risking certain data points like medications, allergies, etc.) and existing patients get the familiar attention they deserve. Clinicians feel valued and patients feel cared for, keeping everyone’s satisfaction levels high.

Lower costs, higher efficiency

With staffing shortages and increasing wages, keeping your chart abstraction in-house can become expensive. Clinicians are working overtime to ensure that charts are complete. With that comes higher overtime rates. Those costs add up quickly. Outsourced services typically offer a rate that is more competitive than what you’d wind up paying your clinicians.

Outsourcing chart abstraction can also improve the quality of care and increase patient volumes. When providers can focus solely on care, each visit moves faster, taking up less time and creating space for increased patient volume. It also improves care by making each visit more patient-centric resulting in higher patient retention – a topic for another day.

Final thoughts

Is it possible to manage your chart abstraction in-house? Yes. But should you? I’d argue you shouldn’t.  With the rise of clinician burnout, wage increases, and the competitive landscape of healthcare, outsourcing chart abstraction to clinical experts leads to more accurate data that’s available to providers when they need it. You can avoid burnout by not overloading your team with additional abstraction responsibilities while improving the overall efficiency of the process… and potentially save a few bucks along the way.

Scott Collins is the Chief Revenue Officer for ReMedi Health Solutions. Learn more about Chart Abstraction Services or contact Scott at s.collins@remedihs.com.

The Future of EHR: Automation, Interoperability, and Value

Now more than ever, technology has the potential to change every aspect of our lives. Given the current health crisis, our healthcare system is evolving to meet the current crisis which will shift into lasting changes. Electronic health records (EHR) are the digital version of your health records. Using EHR efficiently has enormous potential to change the landscape of the future of healthcare.

Electronic Health Records, or EHRs, are real-time, patient-centered records that are available to anyone that is authorized to see them. Patient electronic health records (EHRs) contain a wide range of medical information, including:

  • Medical histories
  • Diagnoses
  • Medications
  • Treatment plans
  • Immunization dates
  • Allergies
  • Radiology images
  • Laboratory test results

EHRs can enable intelligent evidence-based tools to help doctors make better, informed decisions on the best treatment for patients. When used proactively, EHRs help automate clinician workflows so that work is done more efficiently and the quality of care improves.

The Future of EHR Will Shift Into a Tool For Communication Between Healthcare Professionals

There are several important reasons that EHR have the potential to change the healthcare world for the better. For starters, there is interoperability. This allows patients and providers to provide access to health records no matter where they go. EHR can be moved from one medical setting to another to help with communication and relevant medical data. This allows doctors to communicate with other doctors and those who are conducting a test, pharmacies, medical imaging facilities, emergency facilities, and even school or workplace settings. Healthcare patients can confidently visit various healthcare providers, and trust that their medical records with travel with them.

The Data Stored In Your EHR System Will Help You Automate Processes and Decision Making

Hospitals collect vast amounts of data from patients, and EHR systems provide a way to store and organize this data. The data stored in your EHR system can then be used to start the process of automating your processes throughout your healthcare office. This occurs when the hospital’s IT and healthcare workflows are synced up.

The Future of EHR Will Increase Value for All

EHR can also significantly improve the quality of care that patients receive. When a doctor has access to the most current and complete healthcare record of a patient accessible, it allows them to make better decisions in regards to their treatment. This ultimately helps to improve the care and treatment that the patient receives.

Over the long-term, EHRs have the potential to save patients money. This can only occur once the EHR, like Epic or Cerner, has been successfully implemented and optimized. Once once this happens, there can be an efficient reduction of labor, and that will reduce the cost to provide healthcare to patients.

Conclusion

Electronic health records have the potential to change the landscape of the healthcare industry. They allow doctors to communicate better which can help provide better care to patients because doctors can make a better decision based on what the record is showing. EHR can also benefit patients by lowering the cost of medical care and make it easier for patients to bring their records from one doctor to another. Finally, EHR is beneficial for the hospitals with a sound data migration strategy, because they can better utilize the large amounts of data that they collect and can start to automate their system. As the technology behind EHR systems grows, they’ll quickly become the core operating foundation of any healthcare facility.

At ReMedi Health Solutions, we believe healthcare IT projects shouldn’t cause stress for physicians and staff. 

As trained clinicians, we recognize the need to create value using technology and data solutions that help hospitals and physicians provide better care for patients in a highly sustainable manner. Our EHR solutions coupled with our empathetic approach not only cuts costs and reduces expenses, but it allows for our clinically-driven resources to make a direct impact to your medical workflows. 

If you have questions or would like to connect with our team, email us at info@remedihs.com.

Data in Healthcare: A Virtual Fireside Chat with the CMIO of Microsoft

Hospitals and healthcare institutions have had a slow-paced, and sometimes acrimonious start to their digital transformation. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic revitalized the need for an optimized EHR system. With patient care becoming virtual, and the likely changes that engulf the ‘new normal’, data scientists, doctors, and nurses are looking to embrace an EHR system that supports interoperability and prioritizes quality data. 

We spoke to Dr. Fatima Paruk, CMIO at Microsoft and ReMedi Health Solutions CEO, Sonny Hyare, MD, over a virtual fireside chat and discussed the challenges that healthcare providers experience with EHR data, how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted health data, the use of data within EHRs, as well as the future of data in healthcare.

To listen to the entire conversation, click here.

What major challenges are healthcare providers dealing with that are directly related to how they use EHR data?

When thinking about the big data revolution, Dr. Fatima Paruk talks to us about the missed opportunities in the treatment of healthcare data. In her words, “I have found that healthcare data has generally not been treated as a first-class citizen throughout my career. It has very much been an afterthought, where data is now being increasingly collected in electronic medical record systems.”  Although there are ways to extract structured data, the culture hasn’t favored it or practiced it enough to optimize it. This results in free text data that is hard to use for secondary purposes. This trickles down to not being able to better support informed decision making for better patient care. Dr. Paruk tells us, “Our patients are a lot more complex these days, we’re responsible for coordinating care across a number of different settings. And often, we just don’t have the information from the right person, to the right person at the right time.” 

We need to think about patient ownership of data and how that translates to transparency for health systems, and how it can be utilized to unlock value and inform clinical decisions.
– Dr. Fatima Paruk

Challenges Related to EHR Data

One of the challenges with EHR data is that it isn’t part of our workflows. Dr. Paruk says, “It needs to be within our native workflows that we’re used to leveraging on a day to day basis. If I’m utilizing an EMR and that’s going to be the center for documenting patient courses and histories, as a clinician, I’d like to be able to understand what a patient has had at any other site or what their medications are without having to be a data entry clerk.” 

The recent ruling on interoperability is a precursor of the vision of what’s to come. However, a lot of organizations just don’t have a way to get there. Dr. Paruk adds, “The US healthcare system is incredibly complex. And so, as we think about the prior authorization across different payers, that can sometimes be an interesting challenge as well.” 

Another challenge with managing data in healthcare is patient ownership, Dr. Paruk says, “We need to think about patient ownership of data and how that translates to transparency for health systems and how it can be utilized to unlock value and inform clinical decisions.

What could healthcare companies do better when it comes to their EHR data?

When thinking about the treatment of data, Dr. Sonny Hyare recounts an analogy that best describes the situation, “If your car breaks down somewhere in Wyoming and you are from Tennessee, the mechanic would have more information on your car than if you were to go into an emergency department (ED) in a similar situation… We’re using billion dollar systems to collect data and provide care, but they’re not talking to each other.” And so, it begets the question:

  • How much data are we actually collecting?
  • How much of it is meaningful?
  • Why is this information not being disseminated across the nation?
  • Why do we not have access to it?  

Data Integrity in Healthcare

When discussing data integrity, Dr. Hyare adds, “And what you see is that a lot of health systems are using claims data to bring accuracy to data versus what is in the EHR and what physicians are actually looking at.”  Providers face hurdles where they spend a lot of time looking for information, and if the information they find accurate, does it have integrity to inform critical clinical decisions? 

Dr. Paruk affirms this in saying, “Setting data governance is key…. If there’s questions about the data coming in, how trustworthy is it? Is it something that I can make medical decisions about patient care upon? Because if we’re not making the right medical decisions based on correct information, we would be causing harm.” 

Getting data that has integrity into the new system, and the physician to not miss a beat when searching through the EHR. Our goal is to find that middle ground.
– Sonny Hyare, MD

What has the current health crisis taught us or shined a light on when it comes to the efficient use of EHR data?

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world in unimaginable ways. There was a system wide shifting of gears to Telehealth and virtual care. Prior to the crisis, there was a slow uptake of virtual care with sporadic instances of virtual visits. Dr. Paruk foresees virtual care as it’s here to stay, she said, “I believe that we’ll have longer term success as it relates to virtual care, it’s innovation fueled by crisis. Individual health visits are benefitting from going digital. With finite starting and ending times, virtual care makes it easy to stay on track. The value is currently limited because of the lack of integration. Telehealth is occurring over FaceTime and Zoom, and for Microsoft it occurs on Microsoft Teams. While Microsoft specifically has done a lot of work on their Teams platform to make it very usable, there is still a long way to go as it relates to the integration of these virtual care platforms with the system of record. So just being able to manage the scheduling, the billing, the coding that comes out of a standard virtual care visit, whether it’s an outpatients visit or virtual rounding visit that happens on the inpatient side.” 

Barriers to Technological EHR Innovations

About the barriers of entry, Dr. Hyare talks about how the innovation progress is being slowed by the difficulty for tech companies to seamlessly interface with EHR vendors. While the market is ripe with different softwares and technologies, their challenge is being able to interface with the “Epics and Cerners” of the world. From an institution’s standpoint, they have to think about how they would integrate with their current EHR, but because they can consider vendors who have been in the tech healthcare space not just tech solutions. 

Dr.Paruk reminds us of other teething issues that come with virtual care adoption. Providers should be conscious about the patients that benefit from virtual care; and consider varying technological capabilities and whether they cater to patients who could be hard of hearing or seeing. To which Dr. Hyare reminds us about the very real problems where physicians face challenges with adapting to this model of entry. There’s a certain dissonance when they are tasked with these data entry systems, and because they aren’t accustomed to this they don’t see the benefits. However, to truly move towards a model that is value-based, EHR is the only thing to lead us in the direction. 

Shifting Resources Within Healthcare

COVID-19 also coerced a lot of institutions and businesses to reinvent how they can recapture their loss of revenue streams and innovate ways to make up for losses they saw. While hospital systems have not been functioning the same, with elective procedures on hold and patients not being billed optimally, the healthcare industry had to consider how they were going to navigate the new normal. Dr. Hyare points out that as much as the CARES act was of help to bigger institutions who may not see many changes from the pandemic, the rural hospitals who have leaner operations will make changes in how they work. “I remember seeing a graph where there was an exponential increase in administrative staff, but the number of residency spots stayed the exact same. So that’s something that we’re going to see, going back into more of the clinical side of things and not have it be this overarching corporation like operation.” 

To which Dr. Paruk confirmed, “There’s a number of opportunities that are certainly out there as it relates to improving efficiency and getting doctors and clinicians back to what they do best, right? Removing the administrative burden from them and just really getting them to deliver out on just care.

Describe how the role of the electronic health record has evolved throughout your career and how you would like it to transform in the next five years.

Dr. Paruk talks to us about how EHR systems were first meant to just assist hospital systems with billing, and at the time they were independent from workflows and efficiency. “What we see now is with the widespread physician utilization and adoption of EHRs across the field, we’re seeing far more natural workflows. You’re seeing more physician technologists like myself and Sonny in this space. I’m also seeing that the EHR companies now need to add value to maintain stickiness. So we were seeing increased consolidation in the field. About 10 years ago, there were hundreds of EHRs out there, we’re certainly seeing fewer and fewer large giants who have taken over the market. We’re also seeing increased specialization of workflows within EHRs according to specialty. So, you know, it’s, basically looking at the type of content and so on that’s available within EHRs for the purposes of clinical decision support, managing patient throughput, so on and so forth.”

The Future of Healthcare Revolves Around Physicians

When thinking about the future, Dr. Hyare talks about a system where the doctor comes first, when thinking about health records and the system around it. “At the end of the day, everything is built around the CPT code, and there’s only one person that can input a CPT code.” 

Dr. Paruk concludes, “I’m very reassured that things are going to change and they’re going to change for the better, because clinicians are taking a stronger role in making sure these tools are efficient and relevant to clinical care.”

To get in touch with ReMedi Health Solutions, email us at info@remedihs.com.