Facing common medical challenges

While every medical practice has distinctive characteristics — from its providers and location to the way it approaches daily workflows — the medical challenges that practices face do not vary all that much from place to place.

Every practice can benefit by emphasizing preventive care. And every practice can use some help in implementing IT solutions to reach at-risk patients.

Compass Medical, a 25-year-old primary care organization & an Accountable Care Organization in Southeastern Massachusetts, recognized that their 80,000-patient population faced the same problems seen anywhere else in the U.S. That’s why, following their March 2015 Go-Live with eClinicalWorks, Compass Medical took aim at one of the most widespread killers of all — lung cancer.

“We are a family-care driven organization focused on prevention and health management," said Dr. Dhrumil Shah, Chief Medical Information Officer.

Thank you for attending the 2019 National Conference with us in Orlando. We hope that you learned a lot, attended every session that interested you, and had fun. Let’s take a look back at some highlights over the last few days.

Capture the power of #eCWNC19

Where did the great music go? What happened to those illuminated palm trees? Who silenced the silent disco? By dawn on Sunday morning, all trace of Saturday night’s amazing celebration was gone. Just a few thin hours stood between the final memorable chords from the sound stage and the serious business of Day 3 at the 2019 eClinicalWorks and healow National Conference.

In the lobby of the Orlando World Center Marriott, the rhythmic patter of torrential rain washed across the glass ceiling in waves as thousands gathered for the second day of the eClinicalWorks and healow National Conference.

There are many ways to measure the changes in healthcare over the last 20 years — the dominance of EHRs, new technologies, and empowered patients. And many were on display during Friday morning’s Keynote Address at the 2019 eClinicalWorks and healow National Conference.

Making real connections in a digitized world

We live in a digitized, globalized world driven by phones, apps, email, and who-knows-what technologies to come. Yet, as over 5,000 people gather in Orlando for Friday’s opening of the 2019 eClinicalWorks and healow National Conference, every one of us is excited to meet old friends, share our experiences, and make new connections — in person.

Why? Because #eCWNC19 is about making the personal connections that can be hard to forge in our fast-paced world.

British economist Ronald Coase, honored with a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991, often wrote about the structure of organizations. One of his chief insights was that as the transactional costs of achieving specific goals increases, it makes sense to create organizations to meet those goals.

Coase’s idea is familiar to every medical practice that has gone from paper to Electronic Health Records. Tasks once done manually, at great cost and effort, can now be done electronically, cheaply, and automatically.

But Coase’s insight goes still deeper. Even in our information age, many businesses respond to new challenges with old techniques — they work harder and longer. When they fall short of their goals, they assume they aren’t working hard enough.

After a long and stressful day, you finally sit down, kick back, and start up the new video game you picked up. A black screen accompanies a sprawling medieval-inspired score and the rhythmic clacking of a horse speeding across a cobbled street. You wait. A white bar appears and then crawls slowly across the screen. Your eyelids grow heavier. As you get up to shut off the console, the screen changes to an armored knight riding his horse in circles without your guidance. A second later, the screen buzzes out, the music swells, and the game shuts off.

Now, imagine if the functionality of the software you use affected patients in the same way as a broken video game.