Galen Healthcare Solutions: Allscripts Consultants Enterprise EHR

In the professional world, most of us spend a varying amount of time on conference calls. This can be said of folks both in an office or remote location.  For those that can remember, meetings mainly use to be face-to-face in a meeting room. There was not a dial in number or participant code. People joined around a table or in an audience. Telecommuting was very limited not too long ago.

Technology has certainly driven a shift in how we do business now. More and more people in the workforce perform their jobs remotely. Meetings, for the most part, rely upon a toll-free number and the comforts of your desk at the office or at home. Being a remote employee myself, I wanted to contribute this week with some tips that I have learned regarding conference calls.

 Scheduling

 -          Software

• Be aware of what scheduling program others use. One example is Microsoft Outlook. External recipients may not have the same program and therefore you increase your risk of someone not receiving important invite information

-          Time Zones

• It is important to know if there are differences in the time zones that attendees currently reside. This is critical for arranging the meeting time.

-          Length

• Try to keep meetings to an appropriate length. Estimate a realistic amount of time to set aside. This is beneficial to stay efficient and make the best of everyone’s schedule.

-          Coordinate

• Actively coordinate times between standing meetings both for yourself, and attendees.  Keep in mind that it may not always be possible to accommodate 100% of the requested attendees. It is however good practice to accommodate most attendees, especially essential attendees.

-          Prepare

• For more formal meetings, or meetings that have structured purpose, create an agenda both for yourself as a host and attendees.
• An agenda helps hosts prepare for the meeting, as well as attendees prepare for relevant talking points as necessary. Share the agenda if necessary

-          Arrival

• Try to join the call at least three (3) to five (5) minutes prior to the call start time. This will allow the host to begin the meeting on time. The exception to this would be when calls are scheduled back to back.

During the call

-          Noise

• As an attendee, it is absolutely critical to not cause background noise during a call. My main rule: If I’m not talking, I’m on mute.
• Some conferencing services allow the host to mute all attendees. That feature is excellent for webinars, as this is often used during the Galen Webcast Series.
• Less formal calls don’t require this kind of mind set; therefore it is best to gauge the call to determine your actions.

-          Start

• Meetings should begin on time as best as possible. Starting a meeting on time respects the efficiency of everyone’s schedule and optimizes the time allotted to tackle an agenda. Again, a barrier to accomplishing this occurs when meetings are frequently scheduled back-to-back.

-          Stick to the point

• Meeting hosts should manage the call effectively. Stick to agenda items.
• Prevent yourself and attendees to digress or side track from the topics at hand.  Meetings will often end too early or extend past a planned time if participants speak “off topic” or ineffectively discuss agenda items.

-          Listen

• Active participation in a call is expected of attendees.
• Try at every extent to not multitask during a call. You never know when the conversation might turn to you. Calls are not efficient when a participant is not paying attention; additionally the participant’s image is reflected poorly.
• Be mindful of any language barriers. Diversity is an excellent aspect of the globalization business operations. Respect and pay closer attention to those you might not easily understand, both in dialect and grammar.

-          Parking Lot

• Keep a “parking lot” list during the call for action items. This is something best done by the host or delegated to an attendee to maintain and share after the call.
• Other participants should keep their own list as well, in case of personal action items. This way, you aren’t waiting for the list from someone else for your items.

-          Notes/Minutes

• As similar to the parking lot list, someone should actively take minutes for more formal calls to share with the meeting participants. This helps solidify any items mentioned in the call and records for future reference.
• For formal and non-formal calls, it is very effective to take notes for personal use for future reference.

-          End

• Hosts and attendees that manage the time effectively often may finish early and return some time to the day.
• Be aware of the time relative to the scheduled end time. Once it draws about five (5) minutes before the scheduled end time, determine the best next course of action. The action either could be one of three possibilities: Continue with all or a portion of the participants, reschedule the call to proceed with the conversation, or end the call as it stands. The latter being the least likely course of action.
• If the meeting needs to be rescheduled, be mindful of the scheduling tips mentioned previously. Scheduling a new call can be done after the current call.
• Clearly express any expectations prior to adjourning the call.
• Thank everyone for their time!

 After the call

-          Wrap up

• Send out any new meeting invites as soon as the prior call has ended.
• If any minutes or notes were taken, be sure to share the documentation with the attendees (as necessary) as soon as possible.
• Act upon any action items either for the parking lot list or assigned items as necessary. The sooner something is completed, the sooner it is off the list!
• For more formal calls and as a host, be sure to send a follow up thank you note to participants for their time.

-          Feedback

• For webcasts or formal calls, request feedback for continuous improvement.

Some of these tips do blend into the topic of time management. I think time management becomes more crucial before, during, and after conference calls. As we are more remote these days, more effort is needed to close any loops between meeting attendees. Some meetings are simpler and require less attention, whereas some meetings are more formal and require great effort.

The tips I shared are simply from personal experience. I know people with far greater experience have dedicated books to this topic. I thought some might benefit from a brief article regarding conference calls and some friendly advice.

I am absolutely positive there are people that agree, disagree, and have their own perspective or tips to add!  Please, share your thoughts, feedback, stories, and tips in terms of conference calls! I look forward to seeing this discussion continue and what others might have to contribute to this matter.

Tags: conference calls, Galen Webcast Series, Training

This past Tuesday, I attended the NEHMISS Monthly Event and Social hosted at the Papa Razzi in Wellesley, MA with one of my colleagues, Patrick Zummo. It provided an invaluable opportunity to network with other healthcare IT professionals as the event had one of its best turnouts in the past two and a half years that we have attended (I would estimate about 65 attendees!) It was great catching up with folks and seeing new faces. The networking opportunity can’t be underscored enough!

The event featured a presentation on “An Approach to Meaningful Use” by Laura Leinin, Sr. Project Specialist, Clinical Information Systems at Partners Healthcare, and Jennings Aske, J.D., CISSP, CIPP, Chief Information Security Office at Partners Healthcare.

Laura started things off with an overview of the MU legislation to date:

• Original goal of MU legislation was to target full EHR adoption by 2014
• The three phase of EHR: Adoption – MU – Outcomes
• Compuer Sciences Corporation (CSC) estimated that for a hospital with 276 beds, the potential MU payout would be $4.2 million
• The major certifying entities for EHR software is Certified Commmunication for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) and the Drummond Group. The model utilized is a conformance tool where submission of data is required.
• Attestation if currently a manual process – submission of the numerator and denominator.

Jennings followed by addressing security compliance & MU:

• The main components of security compliance include access control, emergency access (“break-glass” capability), auto log-off, and audit log.
• Jennings noted that with the audit report, requirements included capture of userid, patientid, user activity and the ability to sort by time.
• An example of compliance presented was since Partners had a home-grown EHR system (longitudinal medical record – LMR), in order to comply with CCHIT & Drummond certification, the system needed to possess the capability to handle encrypted file import.
• Jennings expressed that Partners needed to exhibit compliance as described above, but in some scenarios (like the encrypted file import described above) they don’t actually intend on using the functionality. This led me to wonder what the percentage of cases were where the EHR needed to comply with security standards, but would never actually use or implement the feature in operational practice.

For the remainder of the presentation, Laura offered some statistics and updates with regard to Partners MU initiative:

• As of Thursday, September 30^th, 114,644 EPs & EHs have registered for attestation.
• As previously noted, attestation for stage 1 is currently a manual process and Laura warned of the high chance that organizations are likely to be audited post-attestation and as such they should have the records and data to back it up.
• She noted that Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) need to be self-certified in that they often have home-grown systems in the inpatient setting and noted that community hospitals often have commercial off the shelf (COTS) systems provided by the leading EMR vendors.
• She provides a project status dashboard each month to stakeholders and executives with more than 125 data points to track each month!
• Laura also mentioned the challenges of qualifying for MU in the presence of the healthcare information system mosaic at Partners that we’ve previously touched on in our blog in that of the different organizations that are affiliated with Partners (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital), there are different vendor systems for ED (Electronic Discharge) systems, PM (Practice Management) systems, etc.
• In some cases, to qualify for meaningful use, workflows had to be adapted. One example was the handout of clinical summaries to patients.

Several great questions were posed by the audience including the following

• Q: Is standardization of vocabularies at Partners being handled by IT or the clinical staff? A: IT staff
• Q: What’s the headcount needed at Partners for the MU initiative? A: About 50 people across hospitals and LMR teams
• Q: How is Partners handling the case where smoking status is not captured discretely, but rather exists in a note? A: The homegrown LMR at Partners currently captures smoking status discretely. However, there are NLP (Natural Language Processing) solutions (Autonomy, Nuance come to mind) to post-process the non-discrete data for those applications which do not store it discretely. We have touched on data-mining non-discrete data in a previous blog post.
• Q: What happens if an organization decides to switch an EHR going forward? How is certification and MU qualification handled? A: No presenter or audience member had experience in switching organizations, but as we’ve witnessed with EHR vendor consolidation and an explosion of acquisitions requiring data conversions, this is likely to be a hot topic going forward.

Tags: Allscripts, Allscripts Data Mining, CCHIT Certification, Custom Reports, Drummond Group Certification, HIMSS Meaningful Use, Longitudinal Medical Record, Meaningful Use, Meaningful Use Security Compliance, NEHIMSS, New England HIMSS, Partners Healthcare Meaninful Use

I attended my first New England Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (NEHIMSS) event.  And I must say I was impressed!  There were five wonderful presentations and opening and closing remarks by Lisa Ewing, NEHIMSS President.  I had the privileged honor to meet:

• Jim Albert CIO – Charlotte Hungerford Hospital, Connecticut
• Dan Feinburg (Director, NEU Masters in Health Informatics Program)
• Arthur Harvey (Professor, Brandeis University Masters in Health Informatics Program, Director IT Operations, Boston Medical Center)
• Sue Schade (CIO – Brigham and Women’s Hospital) and,
• Many other influential people within the healthcare IT industry.

Jim Albert’s presentation was on the topic of Skillsets required in the new world of automation in healthcare.  A few of the points he touched on were the recent rise of merger and acquisitions within the healthcare world.  According to Mark Reiboldt (VP – Coker Capital Advisors), in 2010, the number of hospital merger and acquisitions have risen 25% to 30% (for full article, http://goo.gl/JOnXk).  Jim also mentioned a very interesting, recent implementation which involved 250 IPhones.   The IPhones are used throughout the Hospital as a way to communicate silently to hospital employees and much more.  Jim also talked about creating an IT department solely of clinicians who have a deep understanding of the intricacies of a hospital workflow.  I thought all of his ideas/recent implementations are very bold and out-of-the-box thinking.  What do you think?

Dan Feinburg and Arthur Harvey talked about The Changing Face of HIT Education.  There seems to be a place for everyone in healthcare IT.  Whether you are assisting with data analysis or dissecting complex workflows; with the right training and education, you can have a happy and successful career in healthcare IT.  So where do you fit in?  One topic that was brought up was the difficulties some MBA graduates face once they re-enter the workforce or are entering the workforce for the first time.  Because Healthcare IT is such a risk averse industry MBAs are facing a competitive market.  Some strategies exposed from hiring managers are simply hiring within or stealing from competitors.  We all know this happens and it can be frustrating sometimes, especially if you are trying to get your foot in the door.  I can say there are no shortages of opportunities, so keep up the hard work!

Sue Schade talked about the Challenge of recruiting and retaining talent in today’s competitive health care IT market.  She talked about some of the strategies Partners Healthcare are using to keep their employees interested and committed.  She talked about Connected Work Space, similar to the structure of a consulting company.  This strategy allows employees to work from home a few days a week and office and desk space is shared between employees.  Another strategy she discussed was Career Growth Initiative, which is a structured mentorship.  One I was particularly fond of is the IS Innovation Program.  This program allows exceptional and hardworking employees the opportunity to pilot an idea for a four month period.  The employee is allowed to put on hold all, or majority of their regular responsibilities to try something new.  The program allows the chosen employees to dive-in head first and develop a creative and new project.  Some of the things this program accomplishes are encouraging risks and learning.  It also promotes staying curious, committed, open, and energized.

The event ended with a networking reception sponsored by Microsoft.  This gave everyone and a chance to talk in a casual setting.  Hope to see you at the next NEHIMSS event!  Did I mention the food was delicious?

Ever wonder who designs and develops Health Level 7 (HL7)?  Well HL7 international is based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan and they hold various workshops around the country.  I recently had the chance to attend the HL7 Education Summit at the Hilton Suites Chicago Magnificent Mile over March 15^th and 16^th, 2011.  (All images and information were taken from HL7 Educational Summit presentations).

The Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) second release (R2) workshop was a very informational, hands-on experience.  Not only did it allow me to obtain a deeper understanding of CDA but gave me the opportunity to meet other members of the EHR/HL7 world.  In addition, the workshop gave me the opportunity to meet some of the key contributors to HL7 standard, including Calvin Beebe of Mayo Clinic, Diego Kaminker of Kern IT, and Keith Boone of GE Healthcare.  I can personally say that they are a bunch of very bright individuals and I am glad they are developing such an important standard.

CDAs don’t replace v2.x HL7 field delimited messages, and instead compliment them.

CDAs are very informational and pack a lot of information.  However, they were not developed to replace the v2.x HL7 field delimited message.  The main advantage of a CDA is that it is human readable and does not require an accompanying style sheet or specification to interpret as opposed to the v2.x HL7 field delimited messages which require a specification.  So you may be asking yourself, why do we still use v2.x HL7 messages?  Well for one, they are much less bulky than a CDA.  And provide an easy, streamlined way of entering data into EHRs.  I have provided an example of each below to show you the main differences.  As you can see, it is much easier for humans to understand CDAs and how it may be easier to enter data using v2.x HL7 field delimited messages:

CDA                                                                                   v2.x HL7 field delimited message

CDA Resources

CDA’s can be used not only as a CCD (Continuity of Care document), but to send lab results, immunizations, allergies, and much more! CDA is the basic template and the number of schema (set of rules, A.K.A. schematrons) determines the constraints.  A CCD can be used to send a plethora of information.

• A great tool to build CDAs is MiniCDA, you may be able to find it online.  It was developed by Diego Kaminker, one of the HL7 presenters.
• A great XML editor is Oxygen, it allows you to associate schematrons, i.e. constraints to your CDA.
• If you would prefer to validate your CDA using an internet-based program, the CDA validation site is a good resource.
• A great resource for general information about CDAs is CDA tools
• Once you have created a CDA, a great place to locate various LOINCs to validate the CDA is Regenstrief LOINC Mapping Assistant (RELMA),
• And finally, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), is a great healthcare integration resource.

Tags: CCD, CDA, Clinical Document Architecture, Continuity of Care Document, HL7 Educational Summit, Integration, Interfaces, Interoperability, LOINC, Meaningful Use, RELMA

Were you aware that the moment the IS staff plugs a USB connector into a medical device to send data from it to another device, the organization could become the manufacturer of a completely new medical device and subject to recently announced Medical Device Data System regulations from the FDA? Were you aware that devices that collect and store data from a blood pressure cuff for future use or that transfer thermometer readings to be displayed at a nursing station for future use are considered an MDDS product and thus governed by the FDA?  Well if you didn’t know, you are not the only one as neither did I until attending the latest New England HIMSS (NEHIMSS) Monthly Event and Social Tuesday evening at the Papa Razzi in Wellesley, MA.  Rick Hampton did a phenomenal job of running through the rules and regulations surrounding “Integration of HIT & Medical Devices.”  Rick is a Clinical Engineer who has helped write several international standards, including the latest on risk management of integrated HIT and medical networks.  He works for Partners HealthCare as their Wireless Communications Manager.

Rick outlined the trend in increasing attention being paid to HIT integration efforts over the past few years.  The latest are new FDA rules from February 15, 2011, which specified “Medical Device Data Systems are off-the-shelf or custom hardware or software products used alone or in combination that display unaltered medical device data, or transfer, store or convert medical device data for future use, in accordance with a preset specification.”  He then discussed how the new standard, IEC 80001-1, was written to help hospitals perform proactive risk management when creating these integrated systems.

Currently, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are granted an exception from being considered a medical device, however one might anticipate the day when they are considered as such and are regulated the same as a Laboratory Information System (LIS) or Radiology Information System (RIS). For an interface analyst such as myself, the implications are that there will be liability in the exchange of unsolicited results (for instance) between the LIS and the EHR. For those Allscripts users, this also brings into question the applicability of the regulations on the Allscripts Universal Application Integrator (UAI), which provides Allscripts Enterprise EHR the ability to interface with third party applications. An example would be a Welch Alynn Vital device.

A great question was posed from a HIT project manager in the audience who inquired about where this all fits in the scheme of all of the potentially competing projects in the enterprise (HIPAA 5010 EDI, ICD10 and MU come to mind), and also, where does it come into play in terms of the project to get the necessary departments together to discuss compliance? Often times the clinicians, end-users or decision-makers have already procured the software/solution/system and simply hand-off to IT to implement, and unfortunately it is too late by that point to perform the necessary risk assessment and ensure compliance.

Additionally, Rick provided a great link for organization’s to participate in the AAMI/ACCE/HIMSS Risk Analysis Survey to ensure compliance. This survey is intended to obtain baseline information from healthcare delivery organizations about the application of risk management during the healthcare technology life-cycle (eg. acquisition, deployment, use, modification and retirement).

On a side note, this was my first NEHIMSS meeting which I attended as a member. The group has historically been very gracious in allowing non-members to attend free of charge, but to me it made sense to invest $30 for a chapter membership (essentially a drop in the bucket). Not only do I get great exposure to topics and presentations I normally wouldn’t have access to, but I also get the opportunity to network and form contacts with fellow members of the HIT industry.  To me, that is a $30 well spent (by Galen of course .

Lastly, for those project managers out there, be sure to register for the 5^th Annual New England HIMSS/PMI-NH Project Management Symposium, hosted at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth, NH. There are some great speakers presenting who will surely offer valuable insight into their experiences with initiatives that directly impact the healthcare organization today (Patient Portal, PM’s role in an EMR implementation, Project Managing a 5010 and ICD-10 upgrade, and HIE implementation to name a few). CPHIMS Credits will be offered for this event as well!

Tags: Allscripts UAI, EHR, FDA, IEC 80001, Integration, Interfaces, Interoperability, LIS, MDDS, Meaningful Use, Medical Device, NEHIMSS, New England HIMSS, Partners, RIS, Universal Application Integrator

Last Wednesday I attended the VITL Summit ’10 in Burlington Vermont.  VITL is non-profit “public charity” that operates as a partnership between the public and private sectors; VITL receives funding from the federal and state governments, as well as the Vermont Health IT Fund.

As part of the HITECH Act (Health Information Technology Extension Program) VITL became a Regional Extension Center (REC) and received $6,762,080 in Round 1 funding from the ONC.  RECs provide: training and support services to assist doctors and other providers in adopting EHRs, information and guidance to help with EHR implementation and technical assistance as needed.

The Summit Key Note speaker was Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT.  Vermont Governor Jim Douglas was also there to emphasize how important the topic is to the state.  Dr. Blumenthal’s speech touched on a variety of topics and as expected, stressed how important the adoption and use of EHRs is to the future of how doctors practice medicine.  An interesting personal note Dr. Blumenthal shared was about his daughter who is currently in Residency.  Her current rotation had her moving from a practice that used an EHR to a practice that did not.  Her immediate response… ‘how could someone possibly be affective without an electronic system in place?’; an opinion father and daughter obviously share.  Along those lines, he suggested that new doctors, fresh out of medical school, would know nothing other than an electronic practice.

Additional notes from Dr. Blumenthal’s remarks;

• Dr. Blumenthal is an self-proclaimed “non-geek”, with a house in South Pomfret, VT.  He believes Vermont serves as a model for how EHR/HIE programs could be designed and thinks VT has a unique, competitive edge because of its collaborative spirit and natural desire to exchange information.
• Some reasons he thinks EHRs develop better doctors;
  • 24/7 Information access – problems, meds, history, etc
  • “See” what’s been done – even if you weren’t around when it happened
  • Knowing/receiving result more quickly
  • Decision support
  • Interaction checking – allergies, meds
• The big benefits of adoption – (most, if not all are oft repeated by those in our industry)
  • Reduce costs – an important point for many of the individuals participating in the conference.  Short term improvements in terms of reducing operational costs of a practice (efficiencies), longer term.. see next bullet.
  • Increase the quality of care – this was a point he expressed a number of times.  He pointed out that perhaps not in phase 1 of MU, but long term (phases 2 and 3), this was the ultimate goal.  I.e. EHRs would improve patient outcomes, remove redundancies and ultimately affect overall patient health.
• 3 Barriers of EHR adoption (+1 more)
  1. Financial
  2. Logistical/technical – especially for smaller practices.. there is a tendency to think it’s too difficult or time consuming
  3. Sharing – Will sharing patient data be accepted?  Will it actually hurt my practice?
  4. Trained workforce – Dr. Blumenthal mentioned that many more colleges and universities are now developing disciplines in Healthcare IT (including some in Vermont!)
• Meaningful Use will be here before you know it…
  • Practices will have 2 years, from Oct 1^st , to pick an EHR and meet MU requirements for reimbursement.  DO NOT wait.  Time will pass quickly and inevitably a bottleneck will develop.

In a separate presentation, VITL’s HIE offering was discussed.  Connection to an Exchange like this one will eventually be a requirement for all those participating in the MU program.  VITL’s exchange is run by GE and like other HIE’s, employs a hub and spoke model to connect practices and make the exchange of patient data possible.  Besides the physical network making the connections and the software platform running the exchange, HIE policy will play a large part in how information is shared.  Whether individual patients choose to participate, what privacy rules are in place and how security is managed will all play a central role in an HIE.

An interesting part of the Summit was the presence of all the big vendors; GE, McKesson, Greenway, NextGen, Athena, Cerner, Medent, eClincalWorks and of course Allscripts.  The interesting part came from being able to go from both to both and see one application after the next.  Seeing and feeling the dramatic differences in how they each work, look and perform.

This year’s event was sold out and overall seemed like a big hit with everyone in attendance.  Great job VITL!

Tags: EHR, EMR, HIE, HITECH, REC, VITL

This year at ACE everyone was a winner with Galen!  Our booth was alive with activity as folks stopped by to see Galen Healthcare Solutions Wiki demos, VitalCenter Demos, to learn about Galen services and to take a spin on our Galen Slot Machine.  Tons of prizes were given out including entries to win an iPad, $10 in Mandalay Bay Casino Chips, and our Spin and Win Grand Prize of $200 in casino chips!   The last day of the ACE event we had a drawing for a free iPad!

We want to say special congratulations to all of our winners!!!

Susan Schimpf, from CapitalCare Medical Group, won the $200 Spin and Win Grand Prize

Melissa Singh, from North Shore Long Island Jewish, won in the drawing for the free iPad!

Over FIFTY $10 casino chips prizes were given to Galen slot machine winners and to those faithful followers caught out and about wearing their “Win with Galen” stickers!

Thanks to all of those that participated – we had a blast!

Tags: Allscripts, Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR

What a week!  As with returning from any trip to Las Vegas, it seems to take forever to settle back in to the normal routine.  This time it seems that the “magic”, however you want to define it, of Las Vegas was simply overshadowed by the excitement of ACE. 

For us here at Galen it was a great time to see old friends and clients, as well as, meet new friends and clients all in a setting that facilitated learning, sharing and connecting our collective community; of course, having a little bit of fun along the way doesn’t hurt.

By far the most rewarding part of ACE is connecting with our clients and hearing about the successes our people have made, both on an individual level as well as a community level.  There is nothing more rewarding than hearing a client’s success story and being able to share with our group the service that someone from Galen provided.

In the coming year, we look forward to our continued contributions and learning from our people, clients and community.  Nothing contributes to innovation more than a passionate community.

It was great to see all of our old friends, and we look forward to making new ones.

Matt Nice

Tags: Allscripts, Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, Enterprise EHR

As many of our loyal blog followers know, the Allscripts Client Experience (ACE) is Allscripts annual user conference, and a huge event for Galen. It’s a time for us to reconnect with clients, Allscripts contacts, and build new relationships. The theme of this year’s conference was “GO” – the time is now to implement an EHR, and ensure groups are setup to exhibit Meaningful Use.

Some of my own key highlights and takeaways from ACE:

• “The Path to Meaningful Use”
  • Allscripts offered a handy trail guide for ACE:

• The theme of “Community”
  • Our CEO, Steve McQueen, exhibited some pre-conference foresight in lending his own insight into Galen’s community
  • MyAllscripts - client portal for all Allscripts products facilitating collaboration via discussion forums, enhancement idea exchanges and blogs.

• Analytics
  • Dan Mingle, Chief Physician Execute from Maine MSO and Dan Reber, Lead Product Architect at Precision BI led an informative session on the Analytics product, touching on the correct process to implement Analytics as well as using the cross-tab analysis and linked group analysis.
  • I was unaware of its existence, but a user group community has been established for analytics
  • Precision BI has a roadmap for several improvements

• Aternity – an Allscripts performance monitoring solution
  • The ideal tool is non-invasive, comprehensive, accurate and provides an aggregated analysis
  • Facilitates user-centric proactive IT management
  • Yields performance by location, variation by site, and performance over time

• Allscripts Product Portfolio Roadmap – Jon Zimmerman, Allscripts Senior VP Solutions Management
  • Revenue Mix Changes:
    • Today: Fee for Service and Bonus Payments
    • Tomorrow: Fee for Service, Bonus Payments for Savings, Contract per Patient per Month, and Other P4P
  • Systems Evolution
    • Paper Health Records -> Electronic Health Records -> Electronic Health Systems -> Intelligent Networks
  • Connectivity Blueprint:
    • Allscripts HUB: Connecting commercial lab, hospital, pharmacy, payer, HIE, government registries, and sate RHIO
    • Services Framework: EntEHR, PM, ProEHR, MyWay

For more information regarding the topics touched on above, be sure to visit MyAllscripts to view presentations from ACE.

Thanks again for everyone who stopped by our booth to say hello. It was both great to see old friends and establish new relationships. And a special congrats goes out to Melissa Singh, Analyst at NSLIJ, for winning the grand prize – an Apple IPAD – in our “Spin and Win” drawing.

Tags: Allscripts, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, EHR Implementation, Enterprise EHR, Meaningful Use

It is with no small sense of pride that we at Galen Healthcare Solutions embrace our role as a leader in moving our community the Allscripts User Community towards its collective vision of improving health care through the use of technology.

Even before our inception nearly 5 years ago, our people have demonstrated an understanding that to achieve our individual goals, we must recognize the value in sharing our expertise and experiences with organizations across our industry that has similar objectives.  We know that to be successful, we must be willing to lend assistance, because we most assuredly will need the support of others from time to time.

It is because of this belief system that we make our combined knowledge freely available to whoever needs access to it through our Galen Wiki and Galen Blog.  We encourage every member of the community, user or vendor, to participate in this free exchange of information with the mindset that we are all in this struggle together.

Further, we are thrilled to introduce a new program in this newsletter where we give our readers an opportunity to increase and direct the body of knowledge that we publish on our wiki by “Asking an expert.”    Users can submit questions to our website and our team of experts will review the questions and use them to direct future content for the wiki.

Additionally, and with the concept of advancing the global effort in mind, we believe strongly in supporting the various regional and niche user groups currently active across the country.  We are witness to the power of these groups nearly every day.  We see email conversations involving dozens of organizations spanning several states sharing concepts with the intention of helping each other move past their obstacles.  We see thousands of users joining to form a single voice demanding resolution to persistent issues.  And we see the times when these groups gather physically, in a single location, to share their experiences, frustrations, and success stories all in an effort to support one another and move forward

We are, of course, in the midst of yet another injection of uncertainty in the form of “Meaningful Use”.  As a result, it appears that ACE 2010 couldn’t come at a better time.  Certainly, ACE is a great opportunity to see old friends and make new ones, but more importantly, it is a chance for the community to convene, give voice to its anxieties, and discuss steps to overcome them.  We relish the chance to participate in that process.

We hope that each of you attending ACE 2010 will stop by our booth, have a little fun (Spin to Win an iPad!), and share your thoughts, voice a concern, or just ask a question.  We know that the success of our organization depends on the success of the community overall.  We, collectively, can achieve that success through a commitment to promoting the greater objectives, freely sharing our knowledge, and continually moving the community concept forward.

Enjoy your summer and I hope to see you at ACE.

Steve McQueen

Tags: Allscripts