GE program could boost EMR adoption
Assess current processes before starting EMR
In the first phase of its "healthymagination" program, which will eventually represent a $6 billion commitment to improve access, affordability, and quality of health care, GE has launched Stimulus Simplicity, which is designed to provide hospitals and physicians with an easier route to EMR (electronic medical record) adoption.
One of the greatest challenges to EMR adoption, especially for rural facilities, has been the financial requirements, and that is what GE is seeking to address. As a joint offering of GE Healthcare and GE Capital, it contains two core elements — a commitment to ensure the EMRs are certified (a precursor to federal stimulus reimbursement eligibility) and an interest-free loan with deferred payments.
GE notes that uncertainty about future standards has been another impediment to EMR adoption.
However, says Patrice L. Spath, of Brown Spath Associates, Forest Grove, OR, "certification has not been agreed upon yet." Under the HITECH Act of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), federal stimulus funds won't become available for EMRs until 2011, and the federal government has yet to set specific guidelines for determining what constitutes a "qualified" system.
However, GE is attempting to overcome this challenge by offering a "HITECH Warranty" for its Centricity EMR and Centricity Enterprise solutions to facilities and physicians that participate in the program.
Critical financial aid
GE Capital is offering zero-interest funding with deferred payments to qualified buyers so they can have immediate access to this technology without up-front capital costs.
"This gives a small, rural clinic like ours a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring our patients the type of technology they'd typically have to travel for," said Stephanie Wooton, administrator of The Hazard Clinic, in the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky (among the first to qualify for the interest-free opportunity), in a statement released during the program launch. "Now, not only do we expect the Centricity EMR to save us money by increasing efficiencies, it will empower our staff to deliver the top-notch care our patients deserve. Frankly, that's the most exciting part."
Wooton says her facility has ordered the hardware and is expecting to go live in about two months.
"The way they're doing the loan was really a big help," Wooton adds. "We would not have been able to upgrade at this time without special financing; we do not have to pay any finance charge — it's interest-free until we get our first stimulus bonus [from the government]."
A captive audience?
The catch is that the funds can only be used to invest in GE's EMR products, GE Centricity EMR and Centricity Enterprise solutions. The Centricity Enterprise system integrates core clinical processes for orders, results, pharmacy and care documentation, in concert with administrative/financial processes for scheduling, registration/admitting, charging, and billing.
But as Wooton points out, in order to be eligible for those aforementioned stimulus bonuses, you have to have a qualified EMR. "We currently do have an EMR, but it won't be a qualified EMR," she notes. "This is much better and helps us go paperless with prescriptions as well as charting."
Tracking care of patients will be superior, she continues. "With activities such as diabetes management, glucose management, or lipid therapy, we'll be able to benchmark that on a graph and show patients where they are at and where we want them to go — in other words, whether they are on the right track or not. And all of the lab work can also be tracked and graphed, which provides a visual for the patient while we explain to them why we are choosing a specific line of treatment and why we think that their therapy is or is not working."
Besides, notes Spath, such an arrangement may not be entirely unique. "This is one of an emerging number of opportunities you will see vendors providing to health care clients," she says. "Organizations looking to automate their systems should explore the various options and see which one makes financial sense to them."
Even more important, she adds, hospitals must assess the current state of their processes before moving ahead with an investment in an EMR. "People should not be automating until they improve and streamline their current processes," she advises. "Automation should not drive how we improve things, but rather it should be used to enable us to do what we want to do more efficiently."
It's also important to remember that automation does not necessarily improve quality of patient care, warns Spath. "It is still the 'people' component that needs to be taken into consideration," she explains. Spath points to recent publicity about the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has been accused of possibly exposing patients to HIV and other infectious diseases from equipment used for colonoscopies at three Southeast hospitals. "The VA has been automated for years, but [if this is true], they may not have been disinfecting scopes," she offers. "Everything can be perfectly automated, but people still have to do the right thing."
For Wooton's part, she is convinced that quality of care at Hazard will be improved. "There will definitely be better quality of care," she asserts. "The system has a lot of preventive care elements built into it and will send us reminders to send to patients — for example, it is time for their mammogram or to have their PSA checked."
It also will ensure better nursing care, she continues, especially because the clinic makes house calls. "We visit patients who can't come to our doctors, and this system will be mobile, so providers who go into homes will be able to have the same information they have in the office — which is a really, really big quality factor," she concludes.
[For more information, contact:
Patrice L. Spath, Brown Spath Associates, P.O. Box 721, Forest Grove, OR 97116. Phone: (503) 357-9185.
Stephanie Wooton, The Hazard Clinic. Phone: (606) 439-1316. E-mail: [email protected].
For more information on the Stimulus Simplicity program, go to: www.gehealthcare.com/usen/hit/hitech_act.html.]
In the first phase of its "healthymagination" program, which will eventually represent a $6 billion commitment to improve access, affordability, and quality of health care, GE has launched Stimulus Simplicity, which is designed to provide hospitals and physicians with an easier route to EMR (electronic medical record) adoption.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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