Toward a Completely Paperless Physician Workflow

[Don Burt]

The Holy Grail of EHRs is a completely paperless physician workflow. Most community hospitals still have a long way to go to achieve this goal, but significant progress is being made.

Community Memorial Health System (CMHS) in Ventura, California, is heading down the path in a steady, methodical manner. Their story – the subject of a webinar on June 24 – is a testimony to the importance of IT-physician collaboration and the efficacy of an incremental roll-out strategy, in which phased deployment generates voluntary adoption.

CMHS began its journey to paperless physician workflow by overlaying PatientKeeper Physician Portal and Mobile Clinical Results on top of the hospital’s HIS, giving physicians one place to go to view all their patients’ clinical data without logging in and out of various applications. The pilot group was so enthusiastic about the system that other physicians began requesting access. Then CMHS added PatientKeeper CPOE, initially with hospitalists, and letting other physicians opt in to the system as they heard positive word-of-mouth from early users. Electronic sign-out and physician documentation followed, and now medication reconciliation will soon go live – again adhering to a low-pressure approach designed to spur voluntary physician adoption.

CMHS’s experience teaches that, when it comes to EHR deployment, the opposite of a (big) bang is not a whimper; rather, it’s an effective approach to building physician affinity and a satisfied user base.

IT-Physician Collaboration at a California Community Hospital: Strategies for Improving Physician Satisfaction & Patient Care

Date: Tuesday, June 24

Time: 11AM PST/2PM EST
Click Here to RSVP!