LOS ANGELES – ImplementHIT, a consulting group specializing in empowering hospitals and large physician practices to implement electronic medical records (EMR) systems, announced today that, following successful implementation of AllscriptsT Enterprise EHR v11, they are beginning the second phase and ongoing online training at St.Vincent Health. A nonprofit health care system, St.Vincent is sponsored by Ascension Health, the largest Catholic health system in the nation. It is Indiana's largest healthcare employer, with 16 hospitals serving 45 counties in central Indiana.
ImplementHIT possesses unparalleled expertise with Allscripts EHR systems, including the latest Enterprise EHR v11. In June 2009, ImplementHIT was selected to help St.Vincent move the entire organization of nearly 300 providers from Allscripts EHR Version 10 to Enterprise EHR v11. St.Vincent recognized this rollout would require significant specialized support and configuration to be functional in their environment. They also required an effective training solution that would protect physician productivity and drive adoption. Physician adoption would lead to cost savings, increased productivity and attainment of federal financial ARRA stimulus incentives.
This project included subsequent integration of the sophisticated and complex v11 Note module. To ensure physicians utilized the full power of this EMR, ImplementHIT leveraged their online training platform to develop custom training that conformed to St.Vincent’s workflows.
With ImplementHIT, St.Vincent has reduced their training time requirements by 30 percent in the first phase, enabling physicians to focus on treating patients. For St.Vincent this was critical because physicians can continue generating revenue by staying in the clinic instead of leaving for more training. Physicians have been able to participate in ImplementHIT’s online training when most convenient for them and outside of clinic hours. With ImplementHIT, they transitioned from a 100 percent onsite instructor-led live training session to a hybrid approach that incorporates online learning. This hybrid learning program leverages the best of onsite training for specific educational objectives with the online component customized to their configurations and workflows and the specialty-specific context of the learner.
St.Vincent is on track to demonstrate meaningful use to access federal ARRA stimulus incentive funding. In addition to measuring the effectiveness of the training program by the learner’s ability to achieve meaningful use, satisfaction scores from learners, and assessments by onsite support personnel have demonstrated a significant benefit. Physicians have found the training convenient and practical prior to go-live. Physician trainers note that onsite training has become far more efficient because learners have a foundation of prior knowledge. EHR support staff report physicians are better capable of achieving pre-implementation patient volumes in less time during go-live support. Because physicians generate revenue by staying in the clinic, St.Vincent has realized a savings of over $6 for every $1 invested into the training solution.
With this rollout successful, ImplementHIT will implement a second phase of online training based on their patent-pending technology. This will further reduce the online training time a projected 50 percent, and help St.Vincent achieve meaningful use of Allscripts Enterprise v11. More details on this technology will be available when it is approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
