Jefferson
Regional Achieves CPOExceptional Results in the ED
The MEDITECH customer shares its strategies for achieving and
maintaining 100% utilization of physician documentation and
CPOE functionality, in a busy Emergency Department.
(9/21/2010)
Since implementing MEDITECH's Emergency
Department Management (EDM) solution in 2006, Jefferson
Regional Medical Center (Crystal City, MO) has accomplished
what many EDs only aspire to. By taking a team approach to
technology adoption—uniting administrative, clinical,
and I.T. staff—the facility has managed to achieve and
sustain 100% compliance in their hectic emergency department,
using both CPOE and Physician Documentation.
"Support from our administrative team was particularly
crucial to this project's success," says Jan Poneta,
information systems director for Jefferson. "In fact, it
wasn't until we had the administration's involvement that we
were able to get this EDM project off the ground. All levels
of our organization had to be on board, for us to achieve
these results."
Building
Enthusiasm through Effective Marketing
When Jefferson Regional decided in 2005 to implement MEDITECH's
EDM solution, administration and marketing staff got right to
work on building a PR campaign to prepare clinicians for the
coming project.
"We wanted to get the word out as soon as possible, so
we promoted the project for months ahead of time to ensure
there were no surprises," says Poneta. "Marketing
was involved in every step of the implementation, even coming
to project steering meetings."
The medical center also learned how important it was to have
the right team in place before the project began, to get
others on board about the features available in the EDM
product.
"We were very careful about whom we selected to be our
Physician Champion," says Donna Boyer, senior clinical
analyst. "We thought it was important that this
individual be familiar with and enthusiastic about technology
in general. After all, your champion is the one who 'sells'
the project to colleagues and gets them excited to use the
system."
Poneta agrees
that Jefferson's Physician Champion, Dr. Rachel Jefferson,
played a crucial role in their EDM implementation. "Dr.
Jefferson was the conduit between our clinical analysts and
the physicians down in the ED," she says. "She
worked closely with her colleagues to offer training on the
new system functionality, and support when needed. She was
instrumental in the success of our go-LIVE."
Implementing
Technologies Physicians Want to Use
Another effort to get physicians invested in the project
involved adopting technologies complementary to EDM, in order
to encourage greater utilization. To this end, Jefferson
Regional allocated resources to include high quality software
add-ons and hardware.
"We consulted with physicians to see what products would
most entice them to use the system. In the end, we decided to
purchase Dragon Medical Speech Recognition software for
dictating notes directly into Physician Documentation,"
says Poneta. "Our physicians didn't care much for
manually typing large amounts of text, so Dragon allowed them
to do their documentation quicker and easier. We also tried
out several different types of microphones to find the one
best suited for dictation."
Tailoring
Training to the Individual
Jefferson also helped its physicians to ease into the new
workflow of EDM by providing a dedicated one-on-one trainer
for each of the 35 ED physicians as they went LIVE. These
roles were filled by the facility's I.T. clinical analysts,
many of whom are former clinicians.
"Physicians could call their assigned analyst at any
time, and the analyst would drop everything to help them out,"
says Connie Merseal, clinical systems analyst. "Furthermore,
analysts immediately made any edits the physician requested
and even tested them out right there, with the physician, to
make sure the problem was resolved. Turnaround time on these
requests was very important to us, because we really wanted
our physicians to feel their feedback was addressed right
away."
Bringing
In Administrative Support to Stay On Track
But perhaps the most successful strategy Jefferson Regional
employed during the go-LIVE was having the administration's
presence in the ED, monitoring physician utilization. "If
a physician resisted using the system, our administrators
were willing to step in and speak to the clinician to help
solve the problem," says Merseal.
"Although all the administrators were very understanding
about the challenges involved in adjusting to new
technologies, they were able to garner support from the other
ED physicians as leverage to resolve issues quickly. They
played an essential role in keeping us on track for success."
MEDITECH
Medical
Information Technology, Inc.
MEDITECH Circle
Westwood, MA 02090
781-821-3000
www.meditech.com