The latest report from the KLAS Arch Collaborative highlights the efficiency of electronic health records as one of the most important factors in physicians’ EHR experience. To assess how the sector is faring on that front, KLAS interviewed 67 organizations to validate supplier offerings and companies that are managing to expand them.
While most organizations have indicated that more needs to be done to improve system performance in clinical practice, the new Clinician EHR Efficiency Software and Services 2023 report validated features of EHR products and services that improved clinical experiences.
WHY IT MATTERS
This year, KLAS researchers asked healthcare organizations in-depth questions about EHR service and product offerings. They wanted to learn, transform clinical program offerings and efficiencies or build, customize or customize an EHR or third-party application and reconfigure workflows.
They also asked about the quality of tools such as virtual writing and messaging by care teams, services that improve interoperability, and the ability to personalize alerts and make improvements to documentation.
KLAS said it invited vendors and companies to provide a list of deep adopters who took advantage of its physician efficiency offering to find out what they would tell their friends about their EHR experiences. The resulting report provides HCOs with insight into how vendors are supporting customers in making EHR selections and assessing add-ons, with commentary on specific vendors from clinical documentation improvement managers, specialists, C-suite technology leaders, and others on their experiences and advice.
“I always had a Chartis Group lead person with me,” one Chief Operating Officer explained.
“That person was present on all our calls, and even though they didn’t have to talk all the time, they were always there. If one of the advisors said something that was misleading or misunderstood, that person would routinely step in to clear it all up. brighten…
“That was very good because that person was paying attention and actively involved,” they said.
The nearly 60-page report provides insight into the following EPDs:
- 3M
- Shorten
- Aimedic
- AQuity Solutions
- athenahealth
- Baxter
- CareAlign
- Chartis
- Cordea advice
- Different
- Holon Solutions
- Innovaccer
- MEDITECH
- Medix
- NextGen Healthcare
- Nordic
- Nuance
- PerfectServe
- QliqSOFT
- Greeting
- ECG management consultants
- Epic
- Evergreen Healthcare Partners
- Evidently
- Experis health solutions
- Forward Health Group
- ReMedi health solutions
- WriterEMR
- Stryker
- simpl
- Tegria
- TigerConnect
- Source sheet
A chief information officer from another organization commenting on Epic Refuel said they advise their colleagues to avoid customization. Instead, their organization brought in hundreds of positions.
“The projects not only created efficiencies for our healthcare providers, but also allowed us to improve accessibility for our patients,” the CIO said in the KLAS report.
Meanwhile, Meditech is working to improve the visibility of scanned documents to make them more relevant to providers’ workflows, a chief medical information officer noted.
“That has been an area of frustration for providers on both the outpatient and acute sides, but Meditech is actively working on that now, so hopefully that’s something we’ll see within the next three to six months,” they said.
KLAS also spoke to end users. One doctor said they loved Wellsheet.
“The data is organized in a way that reflects the way doctors and other healthcare professionals think, and the system presents data so that the most important elements are easily spotted,” he said.
“There is less clicking and more thinking.”
THE BIG TREND
Vendors are focused this year on supporting their suppliers’ EHR optimization challenges, said Sri Velamoor, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at NextGen Healthcare.
Earlier this year he said Healthcare IT news that there will always be organizations that require support and need for optimization beyond what they can get out-of-the-box, to create an EHR experience that drives their mission and modalities of care.
In what appears to be an evolving and rapidly consolidating vendor market landscape as the Cures Act requirements take effect, there are now fewer than 200 EHR vendors, down from 1,000 just a few years ago, Velamoor noted.
For systems to enable a better healthcare experience for both providers and patients, the limitations of EHRs must evolve, says Mutaz Shegewi, research director, provider IT transformation strategies, at IDC Health Insights.
EHRs must evolve from decoupling back-office functions with clinical needs into one system and from “systems of record to systems of engagement,” he said last year.
ON THE RECORD
“It is one of the metrics with which clinical staff are least satisfied – only 46% of respondents agree that their EHR enables efficiency,” the KLAS researchers said in the new Clinical EHR Efficiency Report.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.