News & Events
Adena Health System Recognized for Successful EHR Implementation
June 1, 2009
LSS Data Systems' customer Adena Health System (Chillicothe, OH) was recently recognized as "one of the most successful EHR implementations in the country" according to Information Week, in a May 6, 2009 interview with Adena CIO Marcus Bost. The two-hospital, 300-bed system is three years into their five-year project but has already strung together an impressive list of achievements. During their interview, Information Week learned how the organization kept nurses, office managers, physicians, and other health care practitioners fully engaged in the project. Key aspects of their successful strategy included:
- Assembling a formal cross-discipline EHR team of 11 professionals, including four nurses with IT training, one IT staffer with a master's in IT, and another with a Six Sigma Black Belt;
- Assigning that team to focus primarily on winning the acceptance of the clinicians rather than on technology demonstrations and discussions;
- Putting a chief medical information officer in the department to "live the life" of the clinicians; serve as "a communicator, a cheerleader, a champion;" -- and work closely with the chief medical officer;
- Building a patient portal called MyAdena that allows individuals to manage "some basic but time-consuming" tasks, like self-scheduling and obtaining prescription information; and,
- Connecting and training 130 physicians on the system.
Adena physicians are already experiencing positives impacts of their integrated EHR.
"For physicians, the big buy-in for them has been that it really changes their lives. Instead of seeing 40 patients here during the day and then going home to face a couple of hours of paperwork, they can take a few minutes at the end of each day to write up their notes in the system, and then it's all done, right down to taking care of the bill-drops," Bost said.
Bost explained that the next big phase in Adena's project is to extend the reach and impact of the EHR system further out into the community to reach more customers, as well as continually find the financial benefits that translate into better, more efficient care across the health care continuum.
For additional information:
LSS Data Systems
6423 City West Parkway
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
952.941.1000
www.lssdata.com
