Physician embrace CPOE quickly

Medical Arts Hospital, Lamesa, Texas

Texas hospital’s rapid implementation and adoption of HMS clinical applications drive house-wide CPOE success

Background: Medical Arts Hospital, based in Lamesa, Texas, is central to each of the large population concentrations in West Texas including Lubbock, Midland, Odessa, Abilene and Amarillo. The hospital serves nearly 80,000 residents and offers the most complete diagnostic testing of any comparable facility in its region. Since its launch more than 50 years ago, Medical Arts has become one of the region’s largest employers; its positive impact on the area’s economy and its outstanding quality of care have made Medical Arts a source of community pride. In May 2009, Medical Arts opened the doors of its new facility, twice the size of the original hospital, to support future growth and more outpatient services. Medical Arts strives to be a leader in technology adoption, and a key element of its strategic plan for the new hospital was to graduate from paper-based processes to a digital environment powered by an electronic health record (EHR).

The Challenge: Medical Arts has leveraged Healthcare Management Systems’ (HMS) powerful financial and revenue cycle management applications for more than 10 years, and given its deep relationship with HMS, the Medical Arts board of directors and administrative leadership chose to integrate HMS clinical applications shortly after opening the new hospital. Seeking a seamless and rapid transition, Medical Arts asked HMS to design and execute an aggressive implementation and training plan.

“Our clinicians attended HMS’ Regional Training and Exposition where they interacted with the clinical applications and experienced their intuitive design, and they also saw how well they would work with our existing technology,” said Steve Brock, chief financial officer (CFO) of Medical Arts Hospital. “We knew that expanding our relationship with HMS would help us reach our technology adoption and patient care goals. In addition, meaningful use became an important driver, and it was clear that HMS would help us achieve our EHR goals as a step to successful Stage 1 meaningful use attestation.”

The Solution: Backed by its board of directors and the entire clinical and administrative staff, Medical Arts assembled an EHR team to work closely with HMS, which conducted a thorough assessment of the hospital to evaluate its processes and how well it was leveraging existing HMS applications. HMS also identified areas where the hospital could make adjustments to become more efficient and further enhance the patient care experience. “For an entire week, HMS visited with every manager who would take part in the implementation and training to better understand their needs and how their departments operated. The assessment set the groundwork for what we needed to accomplish, and it played a large part in getting our staff involved and greatly contributed to our success,” said Diane Sherrill, RN, director of outpatient services and med-surg coordinator.

Medical Arts leaders recognized that clinician involvement would help drive adoption of the new modules it was adding to its existing HMS infrastructure, including health information management (HIM), patient care documentation, electronic medication administration record (eMAR), and computerized provider order entry (CPOE). To drive participation, the hospital identified super users to champion efforts by encouraging and assisting the staff, addressing questions and easing concerns.

“We asked clinicians for their opinions and preferences and sought their input for some of the builds to ensure that everything met new industry and government standards,” said Sherrill. “While clinician involvement significantly influenced our success, the ease of use of HMS’ applications resulted in very quick adoption. The HMS system was embraced so quickly that our physicians, including our contracted emergency department physicians, were using CPOE within three days of go-live. We’re very proud of that.”

Medical Arts found that certain features in HMS’ clinical documentation, such as an image of an anatomical man, greatly improved the completeness of charts and helped reduce the time it took to enter information. For example, nurses can conduct pain and wound-care assessments and accurately enter very detailed information much faster with HMS clinical applications. By removing manually intensive processes, Medical Arts’ clinicians have more time to spend with patients, which is greatly impacting their overall care experience.

“The community recognizes our commitment to providing the best care possible, and the new hospital with all the technology we put in place is a demonstration of our commitment to the community. We’ve received great feedback as a result,” said Brock.

A comprehensive training program led by HMS’ clinical and IT experts contributed to Medical Arts’ rapid implementation, as well as its high clinician adoption rates. HMS also assisted with the build out of physician orders and nursing flow sheets, defined and established security protocols, and helped the entire hospital adjust to process and workflow changes.

Medical Arts expects to realize additional benefits to its overall efficiency and financial performance once it implements the HMS Emergency Department Information System (EDIS). In addition, Medical Arts received positive feedback from its local HIT Regional Extension Center regarding how well prepared the hospital is to attest for Stage 1 meaningful use with HMS’ system in place.

“HMS’ commitment to our success was clear from the beginning, and we could not have accomplished what we did in such a short timeframe without their guidance and involvement,” said Brock. “We fully anticipate additional improvements as we build upon our current success, and given the considerable progress we’ve made on meaningful use, we’ll be able to take advantage of full incentive payments as an early adopter. A year ago, we never thought this could be a reality, but the groundswell of internal support and the partnership with HMS have made all of this possible.”