Becker's ASC Review

22 HEALTHCARE NEWS 22 ADVERTISINGINDEX Note: Ad page number(s) given in parentheses healow. eclinicalworks.com / sunoh.ai (pg. 5) nimble solutions. nimblercm.com / (877) 236-5245 (pg. 23) Quest Medical. questmps3.com / (800) 627-0226 (pgs. 12-13) SovDoc. sovdoc.com/beckers (pg. 9) Stryker. stryker.com/asc (pg. 2) a relative plateau with gradual improvements. "When I was in practice, we used to fax information from one practice to the other. at's a very antiquated way of doing things," he said. "And without EHRs, we might still be faxing, and, in fact, sometimes we still fax, which is crazy. I'm not aware of any other industry that still uses fax at scale." Providers oen don't appreciate EHRs until they're without them when the inevitable IT outage happens, said Joe Moscola, executive vice president of enterprise management at Northwell Health. "e majority of our workforce is Gen Y or Gen Z," he said. "ey're very much digitally native. ere are certain things they're just not accustomed to being able to do without the assistance of the chart." EHRs, meanwhile, have given way to the larger "digital transformation" in healthcare, which aims to address some of the issues where the technology fell short, including interoperability and connectivity, clinician burnout, and patient "stickiness," he said. "On the input side, ambient listening is a total game changer," he said. "I think the core record stays the same … but what we put around the record changes substantially in the next five to 10 years." He said "meaningful use" helped create the streamlined EHR approach that exists today. Where providers used to have disparate, sometimes homegrown records systems, they're now opting for integrated platforms (with Epic being the clear winner in that market). Northwell is switching to Epic to put the health system "on par with the majority of the country," Mr. Moscola said, but is also tacking on a customer relationship management platform from Salesforce to fill gaps in the EHR. "at ultimately will allow us to learn more about the patient and those around them, to understand the behavior of an individual so we also understand what's distracting him or her from their healthcare, or health," he explained. "Is it their kids? Is it their parents? is sandwich generation having to deal with issues on both sides? You're not going to get that from certain tools like Epic." Vinay Vaidya, MD, chief medical information officer of Phoenix Children's, said early EHRs were "clunky," comparing them to the first iPhone. But they became pretty consistent about eight years ago. "Once the EMR was stable at Phoenix Children's we said, 'We didn't implement the EMR just to replace paper. We implemented it for its value for clinical outcomes and the data,'" he recalled. "So we heavily focused on giving clinical data back to physicians. at, to us, was a game changer." EHRs have facilitated care at home, allowing Phoenix Children's to remotely gather and monitor data from cle palate and childhood leukemia patients, reducing malnutrition and hospital readmissions in the process, he said. EHRs also identify patients for clinical trials. Dr. Vaidya called meaningful use incentives — to apply two healthcare analogies — "ripping the Band-Aid off " and a "shot in the arm," helping consolidate the best solutions. "It was something that was needed to reset the country, and not have 75,000 opinions on how to do things," he said. He said EHRs have been disparaged as "death by 1,000 clicks." But providers oen ask for more clicks because they understand the benefits of data collection. "In the last two years, I have received medical care from three different states," Dr. Vaidya said. "Nowadays we take it for granted, but my appointment from one state to the other was seamless. My records were seamless, my medication list was seamless. Nobody repeated my test, they had access to it … my allergies, my surgeries." "Instead of the glass half full, I think it's 90% there," he said of EHR technology. "e tremendous advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning now rest on the shoulders of data, and it rests on electronic data." n

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