The Beautiful Disaster That Is Healthcare Delivery

If I were forced to define the current state of healthcare in as few words possible (at least through the private practice lens) I would have to say its a… beautiful disaster.

All across America more and more agencies are implementing EHR, including federal agencies like the Department of Defense, and State Correctional systems like the one i consulted for in Connecticut.

With all of the EHR adoption currently it would make sense to reason that we are very close to a fully interoperable system.

Unfortunately, that is absolutely not the case (I will certainly speak more to this in a future post, so be sure to stay tuned).

So, what does the private practice have to work with today?

EMR – Electronic Medical Records
PMS – Practice Management Systems
Outside Labs and Radiology Providers
Community Agencies and Providers
HIE – Health Information Exchange
HL7 – Health Level 7
MS Office
SaaS – Software as a Service
Other Vendors
The Private Practice Consultant!

EMR and PMS should be from the same vendor, or be designed to work seamlessly together with a real-time bi-directional interface.

Outside labs and radiology can be integrated into the system using HL7 to interface bi-directionally (ideally) but uni-directional interfaces are also common.

Community Agencies and Providers should be on board.

HIE may be state supplied and up, but lacking (MA). Or still being developed (CT) (With a fully staffed board of directors for the last 4+ years). Your EHR vendor may offer an HIE solution that works with their systems but…doesn’t work with others.

Achieving an environment where you are fully utilizing the technology available, that enables interoperability, continuity-of-care, and ultimately leads to better patient outcomes is attainable but there is no one size fits all method for getting there.

Diversification of services, cloud-based solutions and dynamic or altogether new business models are two examples of viable options for maximizing the bottom line and reducing overhead.

What if you could hire a professional who’s worked in this space for close to a decade, and who specializes in solutions, strategy, and innovation.

Who would embrace the practice in its current state and with its current culture, and partner with your staff to create an environment of collaboration and innovation.

If this sounds like its worth looking into, I’m happy to offer my initial consultation free of charge. We take the risk, so you dont have to…

Thank you for reading!

Posted with the medical practice in mind.