No one likes to be the person at the table who is constantly talking about trimming project requirements. Call them a buzz kill, but it’s important that someone (ideally multiple people) on a healthcare integration project is willing to play the “bad guy” by keeping scope top of mind. This is especially valuable when making critical decisions as third-party dependencies slip or unresponsive resources put the timeline at risk. Knowing what steps are vital to delivering the Minimum Viable Product (M.V.P.) is one of the best ways that technology partners supporting an integration project can encourage forward momentum where it counts.

With the myriad of healthcare IT solutions and services available in the current market, being a CIO and/or CTO can be very stressful. On the one hand, you’ve got lots of products and services to choose from, many of which are priced competitively to survive an oft saturated market. But on the other hand, there is so much noise in this space that it can be difficult to ascertain who offers the best value, what you really need, and who isn’t going to promise the world and deliver dismal results. Afterall, your budget is likely one of the biggest in your healthcare organization, so you’ve got to be prudent when choosing a healthcare IT partner and deciding which IT Managed Services are needed to make your health system thrive.

When a health system has made the (wise) decision to opt for an integrated EHR system to maximize efficiency, operational performance, and care capacity, it’s not enough to simply push through efforts with an assumption that the benefits will naturally follow. Rather, we’ve seen that the best laid plans never really come to fruition unless project sponsors account for the whole lifecycle of an EHR implementation. That doesn’t end with Go-Live or sign off, but extends to the months and even years beyond roll-out. Until a new EHR system is humming along and gaining traction with the optimal workflows, the ROI -- financial and otherwise -- will continue to be a mirage. Including a Clinical Service Desk into your health organization’s implementation plan will go a long way in helping you realize those benefits sooner than later.

For many CTOs, HITRUST served to finally bring definition and practical guidelines that were lacking in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Best practices regarding the protection of PHI via physical and electronic mechanisms were largely defined by a collective understanding of how to interpret HIPAA rules, but the lack of explicit instruction left room for inconsistent implementation and, worse, gaps subject to breach. But one of the unfortunate side effects of this enhanced level of detail is the introduction of guidelines that render the user experience impractical...to put it mildly.

When health systems take on an EHR implementation project, there are many players and components that have to play nicely to make it over the finish line after Go-Live. There are IT systems/programs, new workflows, on-going training, organizational politics, and budgets to contend with, all of which contribute in large or small ways to the success of the project team. One of the most important elements we’ve seen when it comes to EHR implementation for health systems of any size or complexity is good communication channels.

We shared recently that Healthcare IT integration is far from a straightforward process. The minutiae associated with system integration projects is far-reaching, and can seem insurmountable without the right technical partners to oversee every little deal, respecting that a single variable can lock up the entire build. One of the key phases in any integration effort is end-to-end testing. Especially when access to critical patient information is at stake, connecting health systems requires so much more than just technical agreement. Detailed testing of patient data and results flowing correctly and expediently from one component to the next must be done in a systematic, unapologetic manner to call an integration effort complete and successful.

Implementing an Epic EMR system for a hospital network is a big deal. There is a lot of cost and effort associated with an EMR implementation of this scale, and it must be well planned to avoid on-going spend and continued disruption to the organization. As Epic Implementation experts, we know that zero disruption is impossible. But setting the right expectations and deliverables on a reasonable, well-socialized schedule allows for minimal downtime and fewer disgruntled end users. (Fewer. Not zero.) One of the important conversations we encourage in Phase 1 of Epic Training is Why, as the absence of this understanding will hinder your progress every step of the way.

The thought of patients as consumers is concept that can make even the most seasoned health system administrator cringe. But it’s a vital mindset shift that must be adopted across the spectrum of healthcare professionals if there is any hope for a system to thrive. Simply put: if the patient is not perceived as in control of their healthcare choices -- and the revenue that follows them -- then a gross miscalculation of focus will lead to the demise of even the most state-of-the-art healthcare organizations.

We realize we are about to deflate the tires from entire salesforces in the healthcare IT space, but it would be a supreme disservice to our clients to ignore this fact: Integration is never straightforward. Despite connectivity standards that have been around for years -- be it HL7 as the Golden Oldie or new-kid-on-the-block FHIR -- there are an endless number of variables in any given interoperability or connectivity project that threaten to derail best efforts.

It may seem intuitive that the primary concern when it comes to systems interoperability for healthcare is the accuracy of data. Did all the information make it across, and did everything parse into the right place? And sure, that’s incredibly important. But an oft overlooked component for the success and reception of interoperability initiatives is user experience.