Cindy Klein, PMP, CPHIMS, vice president and chief medical information officer of United Surgical Partners International, and Mary Whittington, RN, ambulatory surgery strategist at Cerner, provided insights on the countless benefits EHRs give ASCs in a webinar titled, “Impacting patient safety and outcomes with healthcare technology.”
“The EHRs are moving forward to become a better interoperability and integration tool that affects patient outcomes along the continuum of care,” said Ms. Whittington. “The time of using an EHR to merely replace a pen and paper is past.”
ASCs can ensure they are meeting regulatory compliance standards with EHRs. The EHR system has required fields, eliminating the possibility of having incomplete or missing documentation. The system will alert a user if he/she has to document a time-out.
Here are five considerations when implementing an EHR in your center.
1. Understand the importance of the preadmission process. Summary of care is an integral part of an EHR system, directly linked to the care of the patient. The summary of care gives essential information such as patient’s active current medication, allergies, immunization and prior care information to the next provider in the continuum of care.
“In an EHR, the focus on preadmission adds new safety measures to the care process,” said Ms. Klein. “EHRs take you beyond the ability to just report and gives you the ability to strengthen your ASC’s safety measures.”
2. Filter out the unnecessary alerts. EHRs provide a wealth of data, but healthcare professionals may find the data overwhelming. With an EHR system, a physician may experience alert fatigue, which unfortunately leads to many unread alerts. ASCs have to decipher which alerts add value and which can be turned off.
In surgery, the system relays many pain medication interaction alerts that can be turned off. If a system provides too many alerts, none of the alerts will be worthwhile in providing safety measures for patient care providers.
3. Know the 5 ‘Rights’ of Clinical Decision Support. Information pertinent to a patient’s care may be lost amidst countless other insignificant data unless an ASC can differentiate between the two. When sharing information, the five “Rights” include:
• The right information
• To the right person
• In the right intervention format
• Through the right channel
• At the right time in workflow
4. The patient is at the center. The healthcare industry is trending toward patient-centric care. Using their EHR system, ASCs can engage patients and relay information either pre-op or post-op. “Going forward, ASCs should use portals beyond the front end when patients arrive,” says Ms. Whittington. “The ASC should see if a portal is helpful in engaging a patient by getting information to them.” ASCs can use EHR as a communication tool to reduce the risk of a patient losing pre- or post-op instructions.
With an EHR, ASCs can track patients 90 days after they are discharged. The system can be set up to have triggers alerting facilities and patients after 90 days for a patient to complete a questionnaire. The patient can then submit the follow-up survey and send it directly to the ASC.
As bundled payments gain traction in the ASC setting, the 90-day mark will become increasingly important. All of a patient’s outcomes within the 90 post discharge are included in the bundled payment system. “You will want to have patient-entered outcome data to show the patient is moving along like they should in their path to recovery,” said Ms. Whittington.
5. Learn from your predecessors. Hospitals and physicians have been using EHR systems longer than ASCs, allowing ASCs the opportunity to learn from the challenges hospitals faced. ASCs can also learn what value the EHRs provide hospitals and providers such as the significance of the patient portal.
Because ASCs do not participate in MU, they can focus on the added value all aspects of the EHR offer. “In an ASC, we can step back and look for ways to make the EHR a good business and quality decision,” said Ms. Klein.
To learn more, view the full webinar by clicking here.
