Dear HIS Pros: If a hospital plans to implement most core clinical applications, do you recommend a big-bang approach of turning everything on at once or an incremental one that involves doing a few applications a year over 2-3 years? Generally, it’s best to convert the least you have to at any one time, to maximize the quality and minimize the trauma. “Big Bang” conversions often lead to resumes. Our usual recommendation is to implement a new HIS in 3 phases:
Ask the Pros: CPOE or eMAR First?
Dear HIS Pros: Which do you recommend doing first: CPOE or bedside bar-coded eMAR? Although this question has become a hot topic recently due to its implications with “meaningful use” of an EMR, we have been answering it for many years since CPOE first hit the charts. We always recommend a hospital first implement most nursing applications, not just BMV, before tackling CPOE for a number reasons:
Ask the Pros: What Happens to Paper-based Data?
Dear HIS Pros, I am doing a project on EMRs for my graduate IT class at Xavier University in Cincinnati. My own topic centers on what happens to all the valuable data in the legacy paper records come day-forward? I read that many physician groups are simply scanning them into pdf format so they can […]
Ask the Pros: Best Critical Access Hospital Vendor?
QUESTION: “What vendors would you recommend for a Critical Access Hospital (CAH) of 25 beds?” That’s easy: just look at vendors whose client base consists mainly of 25 bed CAHs: The “Big 3” are CPSI, Healthland and HMS, who each have hundreds of CAH facilities each; indeed, these three small-hospital leaders have few clients over 100 beds in size! They feature strong integration, offering almost every financial and clinical application, obviating costly interfaces. CPSI even has a self-developed PACS and T & A system. HMS just bought superb ED vendor “MedHost,”
Ask the Pros: How to Defend Autorun Attacks?
Question: With some of the new threats going around that use the Autorun feature of CD-ROMs and Flash Drives; what’s the best defense against this type of attack. You can turn the Autorun feature off with a Group Policy, but then you have some CDs (i.e. PACS images, etc.) that depend upon the Autorun feature […]
Ask the Pros: What Kind of Discount Can I Get?
Question: “What kind of discount should one expect from a vendor?” Answer: If you announce a “Vendor of Choice,” telling a vendor they just won your selection process, and now you want to sit down and deal, you’ll be lucky to get a few percentage points off of their list price: 5 to 10% at most.
# If you ask all vendors while still in your selection process to give a discount to become a “finalist,” you should see some reasonable numbers like 10-20% or more.
Ask the Pros: Meaningful Use, CPOE and the ED
My question has to do with the 2010 requirements for “Meaningful Use.” I have heard conflicting stories about Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) adoption requirements for 2010. I know we have to have 10% of our orders completed via CPOE. The question is whether or not we can use the Emergency Department (ED) orders to comply with the 10% requirement?