Transcript: Dr. Sullivan

An Interview with Dr. Tom Sullivan, DrFirst

You know, I'm a practicing physician, I'm a cardiologist, I've been in practice for a long time. And I've with, I've been a medical director of not for profit staff model HMOs, so I know the situation with insurance and what Medicare is doing and how they're making ARRA sort of change our behavior, or they're using ARRA as a vehicle to change our behavior and get us more involved with health information technology. I've actually worked in the system, my hospital system, is part of the Partners System, which is familiar to many people in Massachusetts, but now familiar to people around the country because David Blumenthal is now the head of the Office of the National Coordinator, and John Glaser, who is the technical person, comes from our system. 

So I think what MEDITECH brings to this, and MEDITECH customers can take advantage of, is a huge, broad array of experience and some actual specific clinical applications that will really help physicians help their patients, in terms of, you know what ARRA's looking for is things that, tools and systems that help improve performance, and help to ensure patient safety and reducing errors, this whole concept of "meaningful use" of systems that has become a big buzz word. 

MEDITECH and their customers are very well-positioned to take advantage of that. For example, getting into specifics, I actually work part time for DrFirst, the e-Prescribing company. We have a nation-wide footprint and we're a, we've become a MEDITECH partner for the last several years, so we know e-Prescribing in and out. And to be, again, more specific, hospitals that have to do meds reconciliation at the time of discharge, at the time of admission, you want to be able to have a system that provides the patient medication list, at least at the time of admission, to reduce the inefficiency of, let's say, having the nurse write this down on paper and half the time you can't get the right names of the medication, and if you get the names of the medication, you don't know the specific dose strength. Well those are all helped by this kind of automation. In everybody's array of definition of "meaningful use," e-Prescribing usually comes out number one. 

MEDITECH has made it easy, you know, for clinicians to get this kind of information at the time of discharge and at the time of admission. Especially important, let's say, in an emergency room, where somebody might come in and they might be able to give you a few of the medications, but they can't give you the whole problem list and they can't give you some of the other information, when it's available electronically. 

Now the CCD is something relatively new and not many hospitals, including MEDITECH customers, have it yet. But, you know, to the advantage of MEDITECH customers, we've been doing this for a couple of years at one of our hospitals here in Massachusetts, South Shore Hospital. So that kind of patient summary information, e-Prescribing, there's a whole array of other things: problem lists, which we are beginning to put into the CCD, there's another example, disease management, and registries, you've got a great partner with Zynx Health, all of these things are beginning to come together. You know, and they've been, I have to admit, they've been catalyzed, by the availability of billions of dollars now that we've never had before this past year, so if there's anything that makes people stand up and get interested in modernizing their health information technology, it's the sight and the sound and the smell of funds from the government. 

I could probably say a lot of other things about this too, but those are the ones that come to the top of my head, that MEDITECH is really forging ahead, and ought to be proud, and I think MEDITECH customers feel that they made the right choice, whether it was a long time ago or just recently.