Becker's Hospital Review

48 CIO / HEALTH IT Feeling sick at 1 am? Northwell has an on-demand ER for that By Hannah Mitchell N ew Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health launched its emergency room on-demand program, which allows patients to access physicians in the middle of the night. e virtual emergency department will operate from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. every night. e program gives access to a board-certified emergency medicine physician when physician offices and urgent care clinics have closed their doors, according to a July 14 news release shared with Becker's. Five things to know: 1. Each phone call is answered by a paramedic, who determines the level of care required and confirms an ambulance is not necessary. Within less than an hour, the patient is connected to an emergency medicine physician through a video call. 2. If necessary, the physician may advise the patient to go to an emergency room and can help arrange an ambulance. If the patient goes to a Northwell ED, the physician will alert the ED staff. 3. If an ED visit is not needed, the physician may advise steps such as a follow-up with the patient's primary care physician or getting lab work. e phy- sician can also write a prescription and arrange for at-home delivery. Prescription delivery services are available in Manhattan, Queens and Nassau County in New York. 4. A team member will follow up with the patient the next day to check in on their symptoms. 5. e virtual visit is designed to be affordable and convenient, said Jonathan Berkowitz, MD, medical director of emergency medical services at Northwell. Patients are charged for an outpatient ambulatory visit, which is typically a third to a fih as much as for an ED visit, the release said. Copays are less ex- pensive as well, with all types of insurances accepted. If the patient goes to a Northwell ED, the charge for the virtual visit is waived. n HHS updates interoperability standards: 5 things to know By Jackie Drees H HS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT un- veiled updates July 9 to diver- sify and account more for social de- terminants of health in the U.S. health data interoperability standards. The agency's United States Core Data for Interoperability version 2 standards are a set of health data classes and elements that healthcare organizations across the country must follow to support an interop- erable health information exchange. Five things to know: 1. Health IT stakeholders now have clearer definitions and directions for supporting the standardized, electronic exchange of social determinants of health, sexual orientation and gender identity data elements. 2. By updating the standards, pro- viders can now start systemizing the collection and use of social deter- minants of health, sexual orienta- tion and gender identity data in the clinical setting. 3. The update does not require clinicians to record these types of data or individuals to have to share this information. 4. The health IT community submit- ted more than 600 data classes and elements, including merged and duplicated data elements, as part of the development process for the USCDI version 2 standards. 5. Micky Tripathi, PhD, national coor- dinator for health IT, said in a news release the updated standards build on the feedback the agency got from stakeholders. n How much time clinicians spend in the EHR, based on specialty By Jackie Drees F amily medicine clinicians appear to spend the most time in the EHR each day doing clinical reviews, recording notes, responding to in-basket messages and putting in orders, according to a study published July 9 in JAMA Network Open. For the study, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Stanford (Calif.) University School of Medicine and University of California at San Diego analyzed how primary care physicians in 349 ambulatory healthcare organizations use their Epic EHRs each day. The researchers measured total daily time actively using the EHR and time spent after hours per clinician. EHR time then was categorized into clinical review, notes, in-basket messages and orders. The team com- pared the metrics across general pediatric, general internal medicine and family medicine clinicians. The average total active EHR time for the different groups was 94.7 min- utes for general pediatrics clinicians; 121.5 minutes for general internal medicine clinicians; and 127.8 minutes for family medicine clinicians. The average daily after-hours EHR time for the different groups was 23.6 minutes for general pediatrics clinicians; 34.4 minutes for general internal medicine clinicians; and 31.2 minutes for family medicine clinicians. n

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