Pioneered by the U.S. Army

Many doctors and patients today are using telemedicine, connecting via computer or mobile device for a range of medical and behavioral health concerns, from assessing pain to examining a skin rash to discussing medications. But going to the dentist? Doesn’t that still mean a physical office visit?

Maybe not. In 1994, the U.S. Army’s Total Dental Access Project showed that teledentistry could reduce costs while extending dental care to rural areas where dentists may not be readily available.

For those accustomed to years of office visits for cleaning and drilling of teeth, the question is obvious: How do they do that?

So, your practice has been doing well. You’ve got more patients, happy clients, and superb care. As your practice continues to grow, it’s fair to question whether or not your current EHR is capable of providing you with the tools and help necessary for a smooth transition.

Today’s patients are fortunate to live in an era of remarkable medical discoveries and advances. Between 1920 and 2020, life expectancy in the U.S. grew from about 50 years to more than 75 years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thanks to early detection and better treatments, death rates for many forms of cancer continue to decline. Genetic medicine and new drugs hold enormous promise for curing even the rarest and most debilitating diseases.

While dramatic medical advances grab the headlines, most patients and medical practices focus each day on a more modest goal — creating the best possible patient experience during each medical encounter.

Doing so requires both great healthcare IT tools and innovative, flexible thinking throughout a medical organization.

It’s the last game of the season. The floodlights turn on – illuminating the crisp autumn sky and revealing the compact emerald turf. As you sit on the locker room bench, you hear the other high school students stamping their feet on the metal bleachers in anticipation. You stand up and rush through the tunnel, the nervous euphoria that was in your stomach now an all-encompassing focus on the game.

The whistle blows, you get the ball, your opponent comes directly for you. You shimmy to the left. They saw it coming. BAM! You’re on the ground. Waves of pain circulate from your thumb. Your coach tells you to wrap it. Later, when you take the bandage off, your thumb is more swollen than it had been before. The minute you see the doctor in the emergency room, they look at it and ask why you wrapped up your hand for a broken bone.

The doctor was able to determine how to treat the injury in seconds by simply looking at the hand. If the coach had access to a telehealth solution, a doctor could have determined what to do quickly and accurately. Utilizing telehealth for sports is just one application for this increasingly useful technology.

Vulnerable Communications

Every day, millions of Americans, including healthcare providers, grab their computers, tablets, and smartphones and fire off emails — to family, friends, coworkers, and business associates. Many medical providers also continue to use a much older technology — the fax machine — to transmit sensitive patient data.

We may think our communications are secure. After all, our messages usually go through, and security problems are relatively uncommon for any given business or healthcare provider. But dangers abound, and the consequences of even a single security breach can be enormous.

As the lights dim and you begin crunching on some buttery popcorn, the theater is illuminated by a forest green screen. After the first trailer ends, the screen changes to a dark red. The words on the screen say that it’s been approved for a restricted audience only.

When it comes to movie trailers, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) created a set of standards that help determine whether a film is deemed appropriate for every viewer.

In the same way that the MPAA has used their rating system to try and make the film industry better, so have Standard Development Organizations (SDOs) created health data standards to improve interoperability between healthcare organizations and their Electronic Health Record (EHR) system.

With the holiday season fast approaching, people everywhere will turn to online marketplaces like Amazon® or eBay® to purchase gifts for friends and family. Now, imagine the frustration that would ensue if these companies made a decision to only allow access through a single browser and on a specific type of mobile device.

Users want the freedom to be able to access a website from any browser, on any device, and on any operating system. This same need for independence and ease of use carries over when providers need to access healthcare data between EHRs. FHIR is the means of achieving this.

‘Awash in data, ankle deep in information’

Modern healthcare generates seemingly endless amounts of data, from Progress Notes, exams, and lab tests, to emergency room visits, hospital stays, health trackers, and more. By next year, according to an estimate from Stanford Medicine’s Health Trends Report, the U.S. will have more than 2,314 exabytes (an exabyte is a trillion megabytes) of data.

The more relevant point, author Michael E. Thompson notes, is that healthcare today is “awash in data, yet barely ankle deep in information.”

What if you were the new coach of the team with the worst record in the NFL? How would you improve the organization’s performance? One approach might be to benchmark what’s working for the best teams in the league and use available assets to adapt your processes to what makes those other teams a success.

In healthcare, too, benchmarking can be a critical component in improving efficiency, quality of care, patient safety, and patient satisfaction.

From overwhelming to manageable

Many medical organizations talk about having a roadmap to the future, but following one is hard. Adopting new healthcare IT can feel overwhelming when you’re trying to keep up with your daily patients.

But overwhelming becomes manageable when a practice remembers the principles that go into a good roadmap.

In spring 2012, at a time when Electronic Health Records (EHRs) were still far from universal, the journal Perspectives in Health Information Management published a study examining how EHRs can impact practice workflows.

After 42 years, the Star Wars Skywalker saga is coming to an end. Fans hope that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker will be an epic conclusion to the series, captivating the audience with quality filmmaking and storytelling rather than cashing in on past success and ideas that will sink the sequel into obscurity. To put it simply: quality over quantity.

What could be said about quality in cinema could also be said for the world of healthcare. Volume-based care puts less focus on quality or the type of service they give to patients and more on the numbers and cost of care – those who were the most successful were those who could see the greatest number of patients.

Consider the following paragraph:

11-5-5-16-9-14-7 16-1-20-9-5-14-20-19 5-14-7-1-7-5-4 1-14-4 3-15-13-9-14-7 2-1-3-11 20-15 25-15-21-18 16-18-1-3-20-9-3-5 3-15-21-12-4 3-15-13-5 4-15-23-14 20-15 19-15-13-5-20-8-9-14-7 1-19 19-9-13-16-12-5 1-19 7-15-15-4 3-15-13-13-21-14-9-3-1-20-9-15-14. 23-8-5-14-5-22-5-18 20-8-5-18-5’19 1 16-18-15-2-12-5-13, 11-14-15-23-9-14-7 1-14-4 21-14-4-5-18-19-20-1-14-4-9-14-7 20-8-1-20 20-8-5-18-5 9-19 1 19-5-20 15-6 20-15-15-12-19 20-8-1-20 3-15-21-12-4 19-15-12-22-5 20-8-5 16-18-15-2-12-5-13 3-15-21-12-4 13-1-11-5 25-15-21-18 12-9-6-5 5-1-19-9-5-18 1-14-4 11-5-5-16 25-15-21-18 16-18-1-3-20-9-3-5 1-6-12-15-1-20.

Does the paragraph make sense to you?

Thirteen years ago, Urban Health Plan made the switch

Since our partnership began, our practice has gone through a period of growth and development that mirrored eClinicalWorks’ expansion as an EHR company. After beginning our strategic partnership with eClinicalWorks, we expanded from 3 health centers to 11 health centers and 12 school-based clinics.

The ways that we were able to implement and use the EHR allowed us to improve care by assuring that all of our patients, no matter their location in the Urban Health network, were connected.

Women of all ages and at all points in their lives turn to OB/GYN practices to stay healthy. As medical technology advances, eClinicalWorks® continues to create and refine tools to improve practice efficiency and keep patients engaged in their health.

Functional, faster, and more efficient

eClinicalWorks V11 contains gynecological templates designed to improve practice efficiency. For practices that include obstetrics, the OB Flowsheet is a multimodal tool that helps the physician speed up workflows.

Here’s a familiar script: Your practice delivers quality care. You attract more patients, perhaps more than you can easily handle. You’d love to call a timeout to decide how to better serve the patients you’ll be seeing tomorrow, but you’re just too busy serving the patients you’re seeing today.

What to do? You could stop reading this and go chip away at any unfinished tasks. Or you could read on for a refresher on basic principles that could transform your practice.