CHRISTUS Health Goes LIVE with MEDITECH, Standardizes Data Across Regions
(10/24/2006 )

Understanding the many benefits of standardization, CHRISTUS Health (Dallas, TX) chose to implement MEDITECH's Health Care Information System (HCIS) across eight regions, totaling 25 acute care sites in Texas and Louisiana as well as two long-term care facilities. In less than two years and through two major hurricanes affecting several of their facilities, CHRISTUS went LIVE with its first region in August, with plans to complete all eight regions by early 2008.

"Our aggressive timeframe was the most efficient and cost effective approach, from a corporate business perspective," according to Randy O'Steen, executive project director for CHRISTUS Health. "We were confident selecting MEDITECH's system because the company delivers products and implementations on time and on budget."

Additionally, CHRISTUS' standardization model is laying the groundwork for delivering evidence-based medicine throughout its numerous facilities. "We can now gather data out of the system for decision making, whereas the old system had 14 different looks and feels. There was no standardization," says O'Steen. "Our decisions will now be evidence-based."

Prior to implementing MEDITECH's integrated solution, CHRISTUS began an organization-wide standardization project in order to streamline work processes and communicate patient information throughout the entire continuum of care. For 11 months, staff members from across the organization met frequently to discuss and agree upon data and process standards. At this time, they also defined how to build the dictionaries.

"Making those decisions early saved time down the road, so they didn't have to make them during the implementation phase," says O'Steen. "It was also important that our nurses, physicians, ancillary clinicians, and operations staff, not corporate associates, made those decisions. Because of this, there was little push back from the staff since the standards were chosen by the people using the system."

The CHRISTUS organization began end user training a couple months prior to going LIVE. In order to ensure the end users were on track with training, CHRISTUS used an electronic tracking system to keep them on target. "We wanted 95% of our associates trained before go-LIVE," says O'Steen. "Additionally, we aggressively pushed for over a 90% competency rate, so that all our associates had the ability to be trained and use the system with confidence."

Six regions, once operated by a legacy software solution, were first chosen to implement MEDITECH's HCIS. The final two regions, which currently operate on a separate MEDITECH system structure, will be the last to update their system. For an implementation project of such scale, CHRISTUS structured two implementation teams to focus on three regions each. Each team had two months between each implementation, which were staggered so that no team had to juggle two go-LIVE events at once.

"We researched the use of three implementation teams, but the resources weren't there. We chose a two-team strategy and have been successful in implementing the system with only minor delays, by sticking to the plan that we had in place. However, we had issues with Mother Nature. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita delayed the first implementation by a month, and we subsequently delayed the other go-LIVE dates in response. We've come a long way since the devastation last year, and our staff, along with MEDITECH's support, have pulled us through in order to stay on schedule."

Now that CHRISTUS' first region is LIVE, the organization is preparing to evaluate quantifiable results. CHRISTUS invested in a metrics program in order to determine the success of the implementation and will soon be taking post-LIVE measurements to validate achievement of target goals associated with the project.

"We now have the ability to aggregate data and use it toward business literacy. This was an important objective that CHRISTUS could not complete with the old system. Due to a quick implementation, CHRISTUS will be able to experience these results quickly and ensure better quality care," says O'Steen. "The ability to look at the standardized data and report on it without significant manual intervention that we experienced in the past will be of great benefit toward meeting our organizational goals."

MEDITECH
Medical Information Technology, Inc.
MEDITECH Circle
Westwood, MA 02090
781-821-3000
www.meditech.com