Galen Healthcare Solutions: Allscripts Consultants Enterprise EHR

The last few months at Galen have been wildly successful. We have continued to grow with the industry, and in the midst of this growth, several of our employees have stepped up and received important promotions. We are excited to recognize those people here.

Justin Campbell, Director, Integrations

Incredibly passionate about his work, Justin Campbell’s clients have raved about him and the work he does. Rarely does a week go by that we do not receive kudos for his work. He is consistently working on the Galen Wiki, the Blog, and now the Interface Forums, sharing what he’s learned and promoting the Galen brand.  Despite his already expert-level product and industry knowledge, he continues to eagerly learn more and share that knowledge with others in the community. His contributions to the company cannot be overstated.

Justin’s new position will allow him to continue the work that he has already been doing for quite some time –mentoring the interface/integrations team and developing our integrations business. His expertise in interfaces, conversions, patient summary exchanges, HIE, and UAI will serve him well as he moves forward as Director, Integrations. Undoubtedly he will also continue to contribute to Galen’s success in all the countless other ways he has for a long time.

Congratulations to Justin on a big and well-deserved promotion.

Max Stroud, Senior Upgrade Consultant

As one of Galen’s most experienced Upgrade Consultants, Max has been an integral part of our Upgrade Team since its very beginning. She has great functional knowledge of Allscripts Enterprise EHR™, and her many experiences have allowed her to become one of our true lead Upgrade Consultants. Her passion for learning and teaching has benefitted Galen greatly. Max has been a great teacher and mentor to our newer resources and has been eager to share her knowledge and experience with all members of our company.

That same willingness to share her knowledge has made her invaluable to the many upgrade projects she has been a part of. She brings a great combination of product knowledge, industry experience, and strong interpersonal skills, all of which make her an extremely effective resource and member of our company.

We congratulate Max on her recent promotion and thank her for all the hard work she has put in to earn it!

Michael Ficociello, Senior Upgrade Consultant

Another original member of our upgrade team, Michael Ficociello has been a primary contributor to the success of our upgrade team as a mentor and project manager. His ability to drive projects forward while staying organized and on point has been enormously helpful as we take on more Enterprise EHR™ version 11.2 upgrades. His passion for detail and process improvement allows our entire Upgrade Team to be more effective.  Combined with his strong work ethic, this attention to detail has helped to identify gaps in the upgrade process as well to generate solutions that have since filled those gaps. These contributions to the upgrade process have been invaluable to our clients and have helped  establish Galen as a leading upgrade partner.

We thank Michael for his dedication to our upgrades and to Galen, and for his ability to mentor others on what seems to be an ever changing process. Congratulations on a well deserved promotion!

Steve Stahr, Senior Consultant

Steve Stahr has been a valuable member of the service team while working with a  number of different clients. Among other things, his understanding of orders and results functionality has been valuable not only to his many clients, but also to his peers at Galen. Always eager to lend a hand to a colleague, Steve’s positive attitude and sense of humor have helped Galen become not only a leader in the industry but a fun place to work. Recently Steve has contributed to a number of internal initiatives, including our webcast series, our company trip, as well making the Chicago office a welcoming place for several recent new hires.

Steve is consistently a go-to guy for new projects that spring up, and has always been an outstanding Galen advocate and representative. He takes pride in working for such a great company.

Congratulations to Steve on a well deserved promotion and we look forward to many more years of success!

Tags: Allscripts Consultants

Galen Healthcare Solutions was founded on the belief that the Allscripts Enterprise EHR is the premier ambulatory electronic health record and the conviction we could add more value to the community by focusing on client side implementations.  Over the past 5 years, we have watched that dream become a reality in many ways.  We are currently working with hundreds of clients and have over fifty experts working on our team in a variety of roles.  Our vast expertise is a critical component of facilitating our partners’ successful deployments and advancements of the electronic health record. 

At Galen, we believe strongly in sharing our success and giving back to our community.  One of our driving tenets internally is to “Perpetually Learn and Share”.  As a team member at Galen, it is not simply an expectation to further one’s knowledge of new and evolving areas of the application and stay current with the latest releases but a requirement. Furthermore, we foster a collaborative environment where this experience and knowledge are communicated to the entire team.  This has been instrumental to our success and ensures that when you work with a Galen team member you are getting full access to the resources that define our organization. 

This goal is not just an internal method for us to keep up to date and deliver value to our clients; it is also our philosophy to share this knowledge with the community for free.  We have established many forms of knowledge sharing for the community and our hope is that we are able to further educate the entire industry by doing so.  Throughout the years, we have actively expanded our roster of free guidance and I’m proud to affirm we now have three ways to share this knowledge:

The Galen Wiki – This houses the industry’s largest source of free Enterprise EHR information.  We currently have many customers, competitors and colleagues that use this repository on a regular basis to research and share information.  The Galen Wiki also allows you to sign up for an account if you’d like to share information.  If you haven’t accessed this site, we hope that you’ll take a minute to see what we’ve shared.  (http://wiki.galenhealthcare.com/Main_Page)

Galen Webcasts – Many groups utilizing the Enterprise application have benefited from the various webcasts that we have offered to date.  Our team offers a few sessions each month to cover various topics, including technical and functional based sessions.  The overall feedback has been remarkably positive and we feel this has been a great forum to educate the community and share some of the experience we’ve gained.  These webcasts are free to join and are announced on our website.  If you haven’t attended a session, we encourage you to register for one of the upcoming events!  (http://www.galenhealthcare.com/calendar/)

Allscripts Interface Developers Network – Most recently, we launched a new forum dedicated to the Allscripts interface developers community.   This is meant to assist with questions and advice for interface developmental needs.  As the content and usage grows, our hope is that this will become the primary place to research interface advice or post a question with the challenges you are currently facing.  If you are an interface developer or work with interfaces on a regular basis, we suggest that you check it out and post questions or suggestions you may have.   (http://interfaces.galenhealthcare.com/)

These forums are our way of giving back to the community that has supported us throughout the years.  As we continue to grow and identify further needs, we expect these to continue to grow as well.  We hope that each of you is able to gain valuable insight from each of these resources and cultivate your own expertise so you can in return perpetually learn and share.  Together we will conquer the challenges universally faced within health care today and ensure that everyone in the community is well prepared to implement and deploy the Allscripts Enterprise EHR.

Tags: Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, EHR, Galen Webcast Series

With a majority of healthcare organizations being multi-site as well as an increasing trend in MSO oriented healthcare systems, the ability to effectively manage and deploy EHR to entire physician networks is critical to achieving an integrated patient record and reducing disparate records across physician networks.  The release of Allscripts Enterprise EHR version 11.2.x brings the movement towards meaningful use and reimbursement incentives; as well as penalties.  This requires that organizations develop the capacity and knowledge required to take on, prioritize, and execute multiple EHR initiatives simultaneously.  In many cases this involves what seems like the never ending rollout of sites, practices, and acquisitions that comprise these complex physician and community based networks.

So what is really involved in order to make this happen?  Is it really just about system configuration, setting system preferences, writing interfaces, analyzing workflows, and installing hardware?  Cumulatively it is, but who makes this happen and why don’t they grow on trees?  This article aims to take a step back and take a hard look at the soft skills needed to ensure not only a successful initial installation of EHR, but the underlying principals needed in order to ensure a fully functional, well seasoned, and confident EHR deployment team.

Perhaps a quite common question or source of anxiety presented to on site vendor support is “Well what happens once you’re gone?  Who is going to take care of us?”  The following are pre-emptive measures that organizations can take in order to ensure that once the “experts” leave, the pace of the EHR implementation can maintain its course.

Initiate the Transfer of Knowledge

The fast and furious pace of installing EHR at a particular practice can sometimes leave the remaining implementation and support staff straddling between new support duties and ramping up additional practices.  Don’t wait for the knowledge to come to you….go to where the knowledge is.

• Identify the key drivers and what the critical build aspects are for the organization or practice installation.  Don’t just now what they are, but take the next steps and get a head start in building towards expert level knowledge in those areas.
  • Attend product focused webinars
  • Invest in either remote or on site focused system maintenance or functionality driven education courses
• Granted these elements can require time and some capital to achieve, but the long term return on investment will come in the form of self sufficiency

First Impressions Are Everything

Remember that through the eyes of a practice going live on a brand new electronic health record the initial round of go-live support and change management will set the tone for the long term relationship between the practice(s) and the core EHR implementation team.

• Get the core team’s faces out there and work to establish a positive rapport with new and upcoming practice(s), but keep in mind not to overwhelm them.
• Make sure the practice(s) know that as a team they will be working together directly with the EHR implementation team and that they will not be experiencing this change alone.
• Let the practice(s) know that it’s okay to ask questions prior to go-live and work to eliminate that potential perception go-live day is a just a silent time bomb waiting to explode.

Cross Training & Skill Set Ramp Up

Get as many of the core EHR and support team involved in all phases of the project life cycle for a given practice.  This will help build the perspective and broaden knowledge needed not only to maintain autonomy and depend less on other team members, but also increase the support capacity of each team member.  This can translate into increased support bandwidth and end user satisfaction.

• Encourage every core team member to participate in clinic walkthroughs, workflow assessments, go-live support, and the post-live optimization process.
• Provide internal or “brown bag” presentations (post-live) so that other team members can become familiar with each other’s focus or area of product specialty.

Remember that once the “experts” leave, the core EHR implementation and support team is the lifeblood of the implementation and a key driver to any organization’s long terms success with EHR.

Good Luck!

Tags: Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, EHR Implementation, Successful EHR Implementation

It has been an exciting few months at Galen.  In the midst of the amazing growth we are experiencing both in the Healthcare IT Industry and at Galen, we take pride in recognizing our people who are excelling with their clients.  We are excited to announce the following promotions within Galen.

Cynthia “Cyn” Gerson, Senior Consultant

With over ten years of health care information systems experience, Cyn has played an integral role in many client projects; including implementation & deployment of all Enterprise™ Version 11 modules for a variety of healthcare systems around the country.  Most recently, Cyn was asked to step in and take a lead role with a major client in New Mexico to get them live on their Phase IV implementation which includes Order/Result, Charge, Structured Note, etc.  Cyn has also added her wisdom to the Galen Meaningful Use Group and to our public webinar series, among other things. 

Cyn has demonstrated her skills in project management, workflow analysis, application build and end-user support.  She has a strong work ethic combined with a commitment to excellence in all projects undertaken, and continuously strives to cultivate positive relationships with her clients while providing guidance in accomplishing their objectives.

We congratulate Cyn on her many accomplishments and look forward to many, many more!

Jerri Cowper, Channel Manager

Jerri has made herself an invaluable asset to our partners as she has facilitated the strategic deployment of the EHR in large multi-specialty environments.  She has leveraged this experience, and her understanding of the evolving client needs, to drive other Galen initiatives such as the client education webcast series, and specialty user groups.  We have always heard great things about her from clients and there is no doubt that she builds great relationships with the people she works with on a daily basis.  She is great at advising her clients on the best way to approach their workflows to meet the business objectives of the organization.

Within her new role as Channel Manager, Jerri is responsible for linking the needs and demands of the client community to the development of webcasts, trainings, and service offerings within Galen.  Her active role with the Regional User Groups will ensure the group members benefit from the latest trends and strategies that she and the other Galen professionals are involved with on a daily basis.    Jerri was recipient of the 2009 Road Warrior award, 2009 Galen Rookie of the Year award, 2010 Road Warrior, and was voted by her peers to receive the 2010 Mentor Award.  It’s been a great few years so far and we look forward to many more years to come.

Steve Cotton, Senior Consultant

Steve has been a valuable member of the team since he joined Galen, and consistently steps up to take on challenging projects.   Steve works primarily out of the Chicago office and focuses on Enterprise implementations and training.  Most recently he has been assisting a large client in the Midwest with an upgrade as their dedicated expert to help ensure things go as smoothly as possible.  There’s no doubt that they have benefitted from having him involved and he’s been able to provide them with the support and knowledge they were looking for.   Beyond that, Steve is always helping out when the needs are there.  His expertise and experience with the product is amazing.  Add his ability to explain issues and talk through resolutions with clients and you have a dangerous combination.  Steve was also the recipient of the 2010 Galen Rookie of the Year Award.  He has been a huge asset during his tenure at Galen.  We look forward to what Steve has to offer both Galen and our clients over the coming years.

Matt Woodside, Senior Consultant

Matt is a true professional and respected amongst clients, Allscripts, and his peers.   He gains this respect because he exhibits product expertise, excellent leadership and management capabilities. Matt immediately began making an impact with a large multi-specialty client in the Northeast as part of the rollout and build team.  He has been described by his client as a leader of their project.  Matt is also helping us with the future vision of VitalCenter by helping to create a more defined road map, and he most recently agreed to help with recruitment.  Matt was voted by his peers as the recipient of the 2010 Professionalism Award.  Thanks to Matt for all of his efforts and those that are still yet to come.  Overall it has been a great year and we look forward to working with him for many years to come. 

David Burkhead, Senior Consultant

Dave is a valued member of the Galen team and also with his clients!  He was integral in the deployment of their READY project that included leading them through a successful conversion, design, build, configuration, and go live.  He is currently working as the project manager for their initial clinical data conversion and also as the project manager of the organization wide implementation of Allscripts Enterprise EHR.  Dave has a wide range of skills – he knows configuration of the Enterprise EHR application front and back and has worked on the interface and tech side of the application. 

Dave also has a passion for educating others as evident from his participation in our webinar series and most recently his order/result presentation at the Company Meeting in New Orleans.  He is self described as having a willingness to learn any skill set; whether that is functional, technical, or educational – and we totally agree!

Tags: Allscripts Consultants

Over the past year we continued to experience tremendous change as a company, an Allscripts community and as an industry.

As a company we can point to our proficiency with the Allscripts PM and Professional products. Prior to 2010, our Technical Services team had been involved with a handful of interfaces with Allscripts Enterprise PM, primarily the standard interfaces with the Enterprise EHR. In 2010, however, the team took its knowledge of PM interfaces from elementary to expert as demonstrated in the PM Integration article in this newsletter. The team became experts in inbound demographics conversions, customized outbound registration and scheduling interfaces, and began to explore the world of general ledger interfaces. Additionally, the company performed its first conversion of an Allscripts Professional EHR system – splitting a single environment into three as part of a four-party acquisition. Galen also had the fortune of bringing on a handful of experienced Allscripts PM Implementation Professionals in 2010.

It wouldn’t be entirely fair to categorize 2010 as the year of Allscripts PM and Professional at Galen. Our advancements in these areas simply showcase the organization’s willingness to embrace change. Our commitment to learning and, more importantly, sharing what we learn requires us to constantly move into unexplored territory as we strive to add measurable value to our clients. We share our experiences and newfound knowledge within the industry via the Galen Wiki and the Galen Blog. We also see the Allscripts community sharing its knowledge through the Regional User Groups, the AmberSight forums and at ACE each year.

The upcoming year promises to bring even more change to all of us in Healthcare IT. Many groups are aiming to achieve Stage 1 Meaningful Use in 2011. This means an upgrade to Allscripts Enterprise EHR version 11.2. It means capturing new data, like smoking status and language. It means new interfaces, including lab and immunizations. New workflows. New reporting. We all have a lot to do.

At Galen, we began our journey towards Meaningful Use in earnest in 2010 following the release of the Interim Final Rule. Our Meaningful Use Committee began meeting bi-weekly to discuss the rules, their impact and how we can quickly and effectively assist our clients to meet MU in 2011. Galen’s Upgrade Team will be performing nearly 20 upgrades to v11.2 this summer, ensuring the systems are there for our clients to achieve meaningful use in 2011. Additionally our Interface Team has been furiously working the past 12 months on interfaces that aid in achieving Meaningful Use, and will continue to do so over the next two years.

At Galen, we welcome the opportunity of another year working with some of the best health care providers in the nation. We look forward to overcoming the challenges that will come with implementing the software, workflows and procedures necessary to achieve Meaningful Use.
We will stay the course of learning and sharing – with our colleagues, with our existing clients and with the broader Allscripts community.

Mike Dow

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

“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”

                                                          -    Vince Lombardi

When Matt, Jason, and I co-founded Galen Healthcare Solutions in 2005, we made a promise to ourselves that we would embrace the things that we loved about the companies we had previously worked for and endeavor to eliminate or avoid the things that we didn’t. 

As we approach our 5^th anniversary, I think it is fair to suggest that the “hyper-growth” we have experienced as an organization has challenged our commitment to that objective.  One area that I believe we have remained steadfast, however, is that other than our people and the culture we collectively create, nothing else really matters.

The easiest part of managing Galen is setting expectations in terms of our people’s approach, attitude, and level of accountability.  We are truly blessed with a collection of professionals who simply relish the opportunity to make our clients successful.  The level of infrastructural support the group provides to one another constantly amazes me.  It often seems as though our people take more pride in the success of their fellow “Galeneer” than that of themselves.  Our culture has become self-governing; rewarding high-performers with the respect they deserve, but at the same time mentoring and nurturing those of us still in the earlier stages of the learning cycle.

It is for these reasons that when Galen recently received a bit of national acclaim, being listed 333rd among the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies in America (http://www.inc.com/inc5000/profile/galen-healthcare-solutions), we took it well in stride and celebrated, as a company, with an understated round of self-congratulatory emails and a few pats on each other’s backs.  Certainly, this was a nice recognition for all of the hard work that all of us at Galen have put forth, but alas, there are mountains that still need climbing and they obviously won’t climb themselves.  We’ll save the more “tangible” celebration for when we make our annual pilgrimage to the warm weather in a few months at our 2011 National Meeting.

During his keynote speech at the HIMSS conference earlier this year, National Health IT Coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal suggested that there is a need for more than 40,000 additional Health IT workers to support increasing demand brought on by EHR adoption, driven through HITECH funding.  Colleges and universities across our nation are actively training the people who will fill these roles today.  It is comforting to me to know that some small percentage of these individuals will have an opportunity to become a part of our organization.  That they will be embraced by a culture that won’t allow them to wander aimlessly, but instead will provide a foundation of guidance and support from which they can become impactful, accountable, and successful in their desire to see our vision for interconnected health care become a reality.   

They will, after all, be Galen People.

Steve McQueen

CEO

Tags: Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, EHR Implementation

Tags: Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Demo, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, Data Conversion, EHR Implementation, Enterprise EHR, Extensibility, Integration, Meaningful Use, ScanMD

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 reported on EMR and HIPAA, CMS has made comments on the Meaningful Use Interim Final Rule public, providing an additive level of transparency and CMIO promptly provided a summary of the EHR comments. In light of the transparency CMS/HHC/ONC yields in regards to the Meaningful Use Interim Final Rule, we encourage members of the healthcare IT community to take full advantage of the comment period, which ends in less than a month from now. To encourage ongoing dialogue, we have published a Meaningful Use FAQ in which we anticipate aggregating questions that persist in the community and also encourage active participation. For instance, in a previous post, I pondered how meaningful use would be communicated.

Other items to note in regards to lingering questions surrounding Meaningful Use and ARRA as a whole:

• Dr. John Halamka also addressed the public comments on the Interim final rule on his blog post.
• Many questions persist surrounding interoperability standards, and as John over at EMR and EHR addressed on his blog post, the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) was recently extended to be operational until April 30th only. How will this impact communication of meaningful use from organization to the government?
• We recently updated our meaningful use matrix to include which functionality supporting MU measures are delivered in the Allscripts Enterprise EHR (AE-EHR). John at EMR and HIPAA is also collecting a number of the various matrixes that people have put together around the EMR meaningful use criteria

If your organization is looking for assistance in exhibiting meaningful use, please contact sales@galenhealthcare.com and visit our website for more information regarding our technical and professional service offerings.

Tags: Allscripts, Allscripts Consultants, Allscripts Enterprise EHR, EHR Implementation, Meaningful Use, Meaningful Use FAQ, Meaningful Use Matrix, Successful EHR Implementation