by administrator on January 31, 2012, at 2:37 pm
Spending New Year’s Eve supporting a Meditech go-live is not exactly how most people define fun, but it is how many at our hospital spent transitioning from 2011 to 2012. I heard someone state, “Wow, this go-live is just like Y2K; a non-event.”
What most CIOs will tell you is that the main reason Y2K was such a “non-event” is that the amount of work behind the scenes was like a Cecil B. DeMille production — comprising a cast of thousands that put in long hard hours making it a non-event. The same is true for our 6.6 go-live. The cast was not made up of thousands, but definitely hundreds put in countless hours and made it a major success. In the opinion of our Meditech representative, it was a 9 out of 10, and their best to date.
Read more at healthsystemCIO.com.
by administrator on January 30, 2012, at 11:48 am
Due to a scheduling conflict, the CIO Technology Forum has been rescheduled for April 12th and 13th. Here’s your chance to connect with MEDITECH, industry experts, and your peers, and hear about MEDITECH’s exciting new developments as well as system optimization and performance initiatives underway.
Register now, and stay tuned to the CIO Portal and MEDITECH.com for more details about this year’s event.
2012 CIO Technology Forum
April 12th & 13th
MEDITECH’s Canton, MA Facility
by administrator on December 29, 2011, at 2:39 pm
“4 days to go live” — those words can instill fear into even the most seasoned CIO if the comfort level that everything is ready to go is not there. Luckily for me, I have a great team and, while there are still minor concerns, we are where we need to be for a successful go live. More importantly, we have sat down and reviewed all the critical failure points and attempted to establish fallback and contingency plans should the worst happen.
In the last 4 weeks, we have been at a mad scramble. Meditech recommended moving out the go-live to post next AUG (the next available opening). Needless to say, we reviewed the open tasks and determined we were not far off where we needed to be. Our team then put in a heroic effort to bring things up to par, leaving everyone with the proper comfort level. Additionally, we brought back some external consultants to work remaining tasks that just needed more bodies thrown at them, such as recreating NPI reports.
Read the rest of this post at healthsystemCIO.com.
by administrator on December 22, 2011, at 10:33 am
Discusses Her CHIME Member-To-Member Survey On IT Steering Committees, Chapter 1
The regulatory requirements that CIOs are grappling with are overwhelming enough—throw in a major leadership change, and it can feel like being caught in a whirlwind. It’s how Kim Ligon felt when DCH Health System had a new CFO take the helm just as Meaningful Use was coming down the pike. But rather than panic, Ligon, who serves as CIO for the West Alabama-based system, reached out to her colleagues for help. What she found is that there is no better source than CIOs for issues like dealing with steering committees, prioritizing projects, and balancing the budget. In this interview, Ligon also talks about having to interface with physician offices that use different EMR systems, her role in developing a statewide HIE, when a project needs to be delayed, and why she believes nurses bear the biggest brunt of CPOE.
Read more or listen to the podcast on healthsystemCIO.com.
by administrator on December 21, 2011, at 9:43 am
In 2009, KLAS reported nearly all software-hosting vendors were performing better than third-party hosting firms. Since then, service firms ACS and Dell have had significantly improved satisfaction scores, according to the company’s recent report: Application Hosting: Dynamic Changes Bring Providers Better Options.
They now rival the traditionally highly performing software vendors Cerner, GE, McKesson, and Siemens. ACS and Dell were the only firms hosting Epic and Meditech, two EMR market share leaders that don’t offer their own hosting services. Siemens’ scores improved while McKesson’s and Allscripts’ scores fell.
Read more at healthsystemCIO.com.
by administrator on December 8, 2011, at 4:52 pm
For Cathy Crowley, the path that took her to the CIO position at Columbia Memorial Hospital wasn’t a typical one. It was the economic downturn that steered her away from consulting and into the temporary position that eventually became full-time, but it was her proficiency for implementations and multitasking that has kept her there. Crowley is leading the way as Columbia Memorial Hospital — a 192-bed acute care facility that includes a long-term care site and several practices — seeks to achieve interoperability despite having three different systems. In this interview, she discusses how her organization has been able to leverage government dollars, the challenges in working with community practices, and the importance of being able to navigate the hospital politics involved in vendor selection.
Read more or listen to the podcast at healthsystemCIO.com.
by administrator on December 1, 2011, at 12:27 pm
For Robert Slepin, health information technology has never been an end in its own right, but rather a tool that can be used to improve individual and population health. In this interview, Slepin discusses his organization’s goal of getting its hospitals and physician network on Epic in 2012, best practices for disengaging with vendors, how disease management can help improve patient outcomes, and why ICD-10 should be postponed. He also talks about the importance of transparency within an organization, how to effectively delegate tasks, and why it’s okay to say, ‘I don’t know.’
Chapter 1
- About JCLHN
- Running Meditech/ChartLogic, Going Epic (go-live 2012)
- Cost/benefit of going with Epic
- Integrating the independents/HIE
- Managing resources, project prioritization
by administrator on November 22, 2011, at 11:15 am
From Quixotic: The board of Poudre Valley Health System has approved the decision to move from Meditech to Epic. This comes right on the heels of the Edwards decision you published last week. Both were Meditech 6.0 sites.” Unverified. Poudre Valley is a Baldrige winner and CIO Russ Branzell (above) is a pretty high profile, quoted on Meditech’s site from 2009 as saying, “being committed to excellence also meant being committed to our Meditech system.” It was just this past January that Russ said PVHS’s Meditech implementation would be complete right about now after spending $30-40 million.
Read more about Epic and why hospitals may be moving to them at HISTalk, including Forks Community Hospital and Jefferson Healthcare in Washington.
by administrator on November 21, 2011, at 10:42 am
MEDITECH’s Physician Forum offered over 20 new breakout education sessions, for physicians to network and offer feedback on MEDITECH’s latest initiatives.
You asked for more education sessions, and you got them! MEDITECH’s recent Physician Forum featured more small group breakout sessions, in response to their overwhelming popularity with our provider community.
Over 20 new education sessions were included in this year’s agenda, featuring four separate tracks geared toward the specific workflows of ambulatory, Emergency Department, and acute care physicians, as well as physician-CIOs. A number of these meetings were structured as focus groups, led by doctors in the MEDITECH community who shared their real-world experiences using the MEDITECH physician toolset.
Highlights include:
- Abulatory Discussion
- Acute Discussion
- Emergency Department Discussion
- Physician-CIO Discussion
Did you attend the Physician Forum? Was it beneficial to you? Let us know in the comments!
by administrator on November 14, 2011, at 10:10 am
When I worked for the military we used to say that we train today so we don’t bleed tomorrow. The same is true in our journey to a Meditech 6.x go-live. Over the past months, I have written 14 articles about our journey to Meditech 6.x. Much of the material has focused on our experiences in transitioning from the Magic to the 6.x product line. Now with less than two months before go-live, the culminations of our efforts are being tested in parallel runs and other testing processes. In terms of a loose analogy — this is the same as the military’s version of training. By finding problems and weaknesses during the parallel runs, it will hopefully reduce the “bleeding” during go-live.
These efforts result in no shortage of lessons learned and realization of things we have yet to tweak or fix before our “G-day” or Go-Live day. In last month’s article, I stressed not to underestimate the level of effort (time) required to get your interfaces all up and tested. I can only re-stress how important it is to take plenty of time to build and test them all. One of the challenges you will have on getting them all completed and up in time is the availability of all parties required to be on regular calls or testing process meetings. You will find it a lot like juggling hot potatoes. Another challenge will be in keeping the various test environments aligned, especially if you are still making changes to your CDM, Meditech Orders sets, or User rights.
Read the rest of this update to the ongoing MEDITECH 6 diary, and share your experiences in the comments.
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