EHR

Informatics, Is There Really an Impact?

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I posted the following to a post on the HIMSS Blog titled, Informatics, Is There Really an Impact?.  http://blog.himss.org/2010/09/16/informatics-%E2%80%93-is-there-really-an%C2%A0impact/#comment-434 What do you think?

I think there is an impact, but for all but a few the impact of informatics is not positive. It is however, exactly the one for which they planned—albeit not deliberately. I think the evidence supports the reasons for the abject pickle in which providers find themselves comes from the fact that most failures can be traced back to the very beginning of a provider’s efforts to implement EHR.

To compound matters, as these same providers look to implement Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) to their existing business models, they will find themselves pickling their entire informatics effort.

A hospital CEO recently confided to me that his peers could not be less qualified when it comes to the skills needed to select an EHR system. He stated EHR decisions are being made based on what others have done, on conversations had at a trade show, or on a pitch from a vendor.

Now, before we start slamming the vendors and their products—as I can be fond of doing—I do not think most EHR failures have as much to do with the vendors as they have to do with the providers. Very little documented rigor exists when it comes to selecting an EHR vendor. In fact, I would wager many large providers issued a more detailed request for proposal (RFP) to select their cafeteria vendor than they did for the EHR.

I am a firm believer that if you cannot find something on Google, the reason you cannot find it is that it does not exist. Googling EHR RFP does not offer anything useful. Is that perhaps because there are not many providers who have developed a meaty EHR RFP?

There are a number of providers who are on version 2.0 for the EHR. They are doing so under the mistaken belief that the problems they encountered with version 1.0 had to do with the software. Looking at the large provider EHR landscape, there are providers who are switching from vendor A to vendor B. Now, if that was the only thing going on, one might find cause to blame vendor A. Unfortunately, other providers, some in the same town are switching from vendor B to vendor A which sort of leads one to suspect that perhaps the software is not the problem.

An argument can be made that if a provider selects its EHR from among the leading 5-7 vendors, they should have about an equal chance of having a successful implementation. At some providers, vendor A is working reasonably well. At other providers, vendor B is working reasonably well.

Of course, as the evidence supports, providers have about an equal chance of having an unsuccessful EHR implementation. Some providers are trying to make the argument that after implementing EHR—and spending an excess of one hundred million dollars—having a productivity loss of around twenty percent does not mean their EHR implementation failed.

I think one can state categorically that if your productivity drops twenty percent, your implementation failed. I think that if your EHR plan at the outset predicted a twenty percent productivity drop, your EHR project would never have been approved.

So, why the mess? If a provider ran a disaster recovery project on what went wrong, the most likely answers would come down to many of the items you listed in your post; a lack of requirements, poor planning, and a morbid lack of time and resources directed to process alignment and change management. Why is this the case? I think it is because the target providers are trying to hit has more to do with meeting Meaningful Use than with implementing an EHR that will meet their needs.

Two years from now when providers reassess informatics in light of the failure of ACOs, it will likely come down to these same issues. There is plenty of time to get these issues right. But then again, there is always plenty of time to do it twice.

 

What are the success factors for EHR?

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Not long after graduating with an MBA from Vanderbilt, I returned to Vandy to interview job candidates.  With me, was my adult supervisor, the VP of human resources—a stunning olderwoman; about thirty-five.  At dinner, she invited me to select the wine.  Not wanting to appear the fool, and trying to control my fawning, I pretended to study carefully the wine list.  Not having a clue, I based my selection entirely on price.  I had little or no knowledge of the subject; nonetheless, I placed the order with all the cock-sureness of a third-grader reciting the alphabet.

A few moments later Wine-man returned with a bottle, angled it towards me, and stood as rigid as a lawn statue.  After a few seconds my adult paused and motioned my attention towards Wine-man.  I remained nonplussed.  “You are supposed to tell him that the bottle he is holding is the one you ordered.”

“He knows it is what I ordered, that is why he brought it.”  I thought they were toying with me.

A few seconds later there was a slight popping sound and then Wine-man placed the cork before me on my napkin in a manner similar to how Faberge must have delivered his fabled egg to Tsar Alexander III for his wife Empress Fedorovna.  They were both staring at me, not the Tsar and the Empress—Wine-man and my adult.  “You are supposed to smell the cork.”  And so I did.

“Now what?”

“If it smells bad, it means the wine may be bad.”

To which I replied, “This is the Opryland Hotel—have you seen the wine prices?  They don’t sell bad wine.”  She nudged me with her elbow.  I could tell I was wowing her.  I smelled the cork.  “It smells like a cork,” I whispered to Wine-man.  He smiled and poured a half inch of wine in my glass.  I thought he was still pulling my lariat.

I looked bemusedly at the mostly empty glass, held it out to him, and asked him if I could have some more—I was thirsty.  Rather than embarrass me further, with a slight nod of her head my adult instructed the Wine-man that my sommelier class was over—any further proof of my inadequacies would be of limited marginal value.  Any chance that we would have gone dancing later that evening was about as flat as the wine.  I should have ordered a beer.  I was good at beer.

For those who are still reading, if you are wondering if I am actually going to make a point, here it comes.  I’m not fond of segues, so don’t blink.

Sometimes, a little guidance is helpful—even if it has to come in the form of being led around like camel with a ring through its nose.  One of my on-line friends, a nurse who teaches nursing—seems like a good fit–asked me what are the success factors for EHR.

Often, what is important in a leader is having the knowledge and temerity to ask the right question.  In healthcare it appears that the number of executives with answers may exceed the number asking questions.  Value is often measured by scarcity.   Good questions, especially around EHR and Meaningful Use, seem to be in short supply.

Here’s my take on some of the critical success factors:

  • Adult supervision—this is not defined by the age on your driver’s license
  • Invest time to plan your EHR plan; 6-9 months for a fair sized hospital
  • Actual written requirements (an RFP) that comes from your business strategy
  • A written healthcare information technology plan
  • Invest more than half of your time and effort in work flow alignment, change management, and training.
  • Should your plan seek to meet Meaningful Use
    • By when
    • How
    • What drives your strategy—Washington or your business model

Pretty simple things.  The right things usually are—like knowing what to do with the wine cork.

 

What are the risks of HIT and EHR?

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It is refreshing to know that the voices I am hearing need not be my own.  When I try to summarize the issues for my own edification, I always circle back to the same few issues.

• No single person is both responsible and in authority regarding HIT and EHR. Provider-world pauses with each new pronouncement from Washington as though the missing EHR Dead Sea Scrolls have just been discovered floating in the reflecting pool.
• Those who implemented EHR did so without any idea that rules would be imposed after the fact.
• EHR is expected to serve two business models:

o Washington’s N x M patient/doctor connectivity effort
o A provider’s unique business objectives, none of which have anything to do with a patient in Atlanta being able to connect to a doctor in Anchorage.
• What model would providers be following if there were no Meaningful Use
• If the current EHR national rollout model was any good, providers would be racing to the front of the line to implement EHR instead of having to be offered rebates.
• The national rollout plan lacks viability for several reasons:

o No standards
o HIEs are each being developed in their own vacuum
o A horde of vendors whose mission does not tie to the national rollout or the providers’ business model and who have no incentive to adopt standards
o The requirements and dates for Meaningful Use will probably change once providers have tailored their systems to meet Stage 1
o An ROI can’t be calculated on meeting Meaningful Use
o Both the likelihood and the impact of healthcare reform on HIT and EHR, just got vaguer by some order of magnitude.

I believe firmly the right EHR and CPOE will be great for hospitals. Providers will be better served by finding answers to the question, “What’s in it for me,” rather than, “What do they want me to do?” Unless of course, providers want them running their business.

 

Why we don’t allow horses do medical procedures or EHRs

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There are three or four basic rules those of us who write should use, unfortunately I do not know them. For those of my ramblings that seem long, it’s only because I have not had the time that is required to make them shorter. This I fear is one of those. I write to find out what I am thinking; if and why you read remains uncertain. All of us learned to write in elementary school—most then moved on to greater things—I remained trapped with the notion that being able to spell words more than one way may one day be regarded as a talent.

I found it is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down my thoughts–it saves me from having to verbally rake others with them. Some of my thoughts require little or no thought from those who read them, for the very simple reason, they made no such equivalent demand upon me when I wrote them. My goal in writing, other than to entertain myself is to create a somewhat humorous context to facilitate thinking. As one who enjoys the written word I understand that no urge is equal to the urge to edit someone else’s thoughts, as several of you have done with mine. It sometimes feels as though the best I can hope for in formulating a series of ideas about a topic is to borrow well from experts, those people whose have already made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. The need to write and share my opinions requires constantly trying to prove my opinion to an audience who may not be friendly, which is why silence may be better–silence is often the most difficult opinion to refute. Unfortunately, trapped inside every consultant is the urge to write; sometimes that urge is best left trapped inside.

Much of the project management office consulting I do comes from having listened respectfully to very good advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. In general there appears to be a lack of strategy concerning EHR, making it like trying to jump a chasm in two leaps—it can’t be done. Without knowing what outcome you want to achieve, any path will take you there. This isn’t because the people in charge don’t see the solution—it is because most people have no familiarity with the scope and magnitude of the problem.

Large information technology projects like EHR are often dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. If we are being honest, the end product of project management is making it more and more difficult for people to work effectively. It’s sort of like why we don’t allow horses do medical procedures—it would probably take way too much training. I think that many EHR projects are ineffective because those leading the charge attempt to rely upon reason for answers, thinking, “If we know one then we know two since one and one are two”.

To make the EHR efforts more effective, I humbly suggest we need to learn much more about what constitutes the “and”.

EHR technology makes it easier to do a lot of things, but some of the things it makes easier ought not to be done. The only reason to have an EHR system is to to solve specific business problems within the organization. Getting EHR to do want you want it to is ninety percent mental–the other fifty percent involves voodoo. If you don’t make mistakes during the process, you’re not working hard enough on the problem—and that’s a big mistake. Need I say more? Any complex system that works almost always comes from a simple system that works. The corollary is also true, if the current paper and manual records system didn’t deliver best practices, how can the more evolved ones be expected yield best practices?  EHR alone won’t make you better, it will just make you automated.

Success is a much more likely outcome when one builds upon success. Most EHRs have enough technology to handle anything that comes up, unless a provider forgets that the EHR is just a tool.  It took human error to create the problems we have with our health records processing.  Why then are we so quick to think that technology will fix them?

Misery not only loves company, it insists on it. That is why having a competent project management office (PMO) plays such a dominant role in the success or failure of the EHR. When the circumstances turn extraordinary, as they are in today’s economy, extraordinary measures are required. Plan, take time to deliberate, and when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and get after it. The important thing to remember in deciding what action to take is not to search for new data points but to discover new ways to think about the ones you have. The direction of am EHR strategy may have limits, but perhaps it says more about the limits of imagination and common sense instead of the limits of what is possible. And remember this basic rule, when assessing common sense and imagination, always round up.

I’m not always disgruntled about that which I write, but I’m often far from gruntled. As graduate student I aspired to a stable job, I craved factual certainty and the respect of my peers—so I became a consultant. I soon learned that this is like wanting to be a vegetarian so you can work with animals. The only job I was fit for was consulting. This notion rested on my belief that I was not suited to work nine to five, and that consulting wasn’t quite like working. One of the nice things about consulting is that putting forth absurd ideas is not always a handicap. The good news is that consultants, when addressing things outside of their expertise are just as dumb as the next guy. I’ve always believed that being honest with my clients is the best policy—does that mean that if I chose to be dishonest I would be using second best policy? Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” That’s my hope with these little musings. Remember, we’re all in this alone.

The preceding was a pilfering of quotations.

 

Modern Healthcare: Not enough time for PCAST goals?

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Below are the comments I submitted to their recent article–http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20101222/BLOGS02/312229999&newCommentId=4948192#comments

It is difficult being the lone duck screaming “the sky is falling,” but, I feel someone has to be the schismatist before we all wind up drowning in the Kool-Aid.

It is not that I do not think ideas like a universal exchange language are not important; I think the fact this discussion even exists is because we have kidded ourselves for so long about how well EHR and interoperability are working that we have hung ourselves on our own petard.

Have we put the cart so far ahead of the horse that we have caught the horse from behind?  The discussion seems to be about walking before most have learned to crawl.  Lest we forget the issues, here are some observations we must keep at the forefront—what most hospital executives and CIOs face daily.

  • EHRs are not standard
  • Many EHR implementations have failed
  • More will fail Meaningful Use
  • Some hospitals are on EHR 2.0, switching from Vendor A to Vendor B, while others are switching from Vendor B to Vendor A—what does that tell us?
  • The current hospital business model is dysfunctional; as compared to other industries, hospitals are run more like a 0.2 model than a 2.0 model
  • EHRs were built to support a dysfunctional model, and those EHRs are built using outdated architectures
  • An ACO business model is not compatible with the present crop of EHRs—EHRs were not built with ACOs in mind—they are mutually exclusive concepts, at least with regard to today’s EHRs
  • For and ACO to be of value, to be effective to an organization, they must be joined to a different business model

Before we worry ourselves with future issues like compatibility with the EU and a universal exchange language, ought we not come up with a plan to make EHR viable one hospital at a time?

 

Hospital CIOs: Something to think about

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My new post in healthsystemCIO.com CIOs Must Paint a Real EMR/ACO Picture…http://ow.ly/3w7Al

New thoughts on EHR and ARRA money

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So, there I was, laying out my plans for 2011.  I had started training to become the first person to cross the English Channel on horseback, but I was having difficulty finding a company to sponsor me.  Given my reputation as a water-walker, several firms indicated they would sponsor me to walk it, but I have never been one to do things the easy way.

Scratch the horse idea.

Then it hit me.  I’ve decided to retrace the footsteps of the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl in his quest to travel from Peru to Pacific Polynesia on a raft made from natural materials.  His book Kon-Tiki narrates his 101 day journey.

But since balsa wood is scarce, I will need some other readily available material I can lash together to build my vessel.  (Have you figured out where this is headed?)

With so many broken EHRs littering the dustbins, I figured why not?  I bought them for pennies on the million and had them shipped to the seaport of Callao.  I hired a few systems integrators to integrate the various platforms; McKesson and EPIC formed the major components of the hull, and several copies of AllScripts served as decking.

Launch is set for April 1 of this year.  My backup plan in case this fails is to use all of the unclaimed ARRA money, convert it into single dollar bills, and lay it on the water in front of me, bill by bill, for 4,000 miles.  I know this is a bit extravagant, but I hate to see all that money go to waste.

 

 

CIO shift, happens–or shift happens

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Another comment of mine to Barbara Quack’s post; http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/12/cio-confidence-in-meaningful-use-drops.html#comment-form

I think you hit the nail on the head.  I think a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that stuff rolls down hill and that shift happens.

In healthcare, as in every significant industry, part of the problem seems to come from the fact that CIOs are often considered to be part of the C-suite in name only.  There are several notable exceptions to this observation, CIOs who drive business strategy instead of merely implementing the business strategy that was developed in the “real” C-suite.  Many C-suiters perceive the real role of the CIO is to apply technology to accomplish what they (the C-suite) want done.

Many executives, CFOs, CMOs, COOs, and CEOs regard the position of CIO such that the “C” (chief) and “O” (officer) are honorariums; officers in name only, officers with commensurately sized offices located on the third floor or in an offsite location.  Responsibility often without authority.

I think the issue of Meaningful Use is a clear example of how the practice works.  I worked with a large group of hospitals whose CIO had a detailed IT strategy and plan—projects, ROIs, resources, and capital.  His plan was tied to the business plan which he helped author.

He did EHR and CPOE before EHR was de rigueur.  Then along came Meaningful Use.  Without any understanding of the business issues or consequences associated with meeting Meaningful Use, the C-er’s and the board decided that not meeting Meaningful Use was not up for discussion.  The analysis was thorough, but unimportant.

In a nutshell, the organization which had already implemented EHR and CPOE because of his thought leadership—and long before DC got into the EHR thought leadership business—was instructed to meet Meaningful Use, all else be damned.  The “all else” included whatever it was that eighty percent of his IT staff would have worked on during the next three years.

For the sake of a check, the IT strategy was sacrificed, and the IT strategy’s alignment to the business strategy was sacrificed.  Did they get the check?  Will they pass the Meaningful Use audit?  IT will be blamed if they fail to meet Meaningful Use.  They will be blamed when they fail to deliver all of the other parts of their original plan.  And, they will be blamed if the standards shift in mid-stream.  Why?  Shift happens.  Responsibility often without authority.

“Memo from the CFO: How’s that whole ICD-10 initiative coming?  Holler if I can do anything.”

And guess what’s coming around the corner?  The new hot topic to roll down hill will be the decision that comes out something like this; “Memo from the CEO: The board decided we need to be seen as an Accountable Care Organization by the end of 2012.  Holler if I can do anything.”

Information Technology—IT.  “That must be where we keep all the technology in case we need it.”  Just send out a request and one of those technology guys will put it in for us.

There is only one thing that will stop this train from making the office of the CIO the bucket into which the downhill water is running.  Lead.  Plan.  Instead of planning for what technology and IT resources you need to deliver to meet their orders, draft a healthcare strategy instead of an IT strategy.  Bring forth a business plan addressing business problems that uses technology as a solution to solve the problems.

Define what is needed, on top of what you already need, to meet ICD-10.

Define what is needed, on top of what you already need, to make ACOs viable.

If you wait to respond to their IT orders, it will be too late.

What is troubling hospitals? What isn’t?

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I wrote this as a comment to Barbara Duck’s fine post in her blog, http://ow.ly/3tFPx

Part of the problem, at least in my mind is that many of the large and small provider business models are trapped in what any MBA student would label an 0.2 model. The two biggest adversaries to provider’s success and limiting their ability to change, the two industries constraining the providers’ ability to run a profitable business, pharmaceuticals and the payors, exercise power that comes from their scale.

Add to that complexities brought to bear by other large external influencers—the rule-makers, makes it almost impossible to know what business model to build and under which to operate because providers must build strategies designed to hit unknown and moving targets; reform, regulation, and Medicaid, Medicare. Whatever strategy they design will be ineffective by the time it is implemented.

It is important to note that healthcare providers represent the only industry which does not know the cost of ninety percent of the services they deliver. They do not know what something costs, but they do know what they charge. Even the identical procedure at the same hospital will produce a different bill. How does one run a business suing those pricing models?

You may or may not know that Shakespeare spelled his own name five different ways. While that worked out okay for him, using that as a pricing model—I know this analogy is a stretch—makes no sense.

Compare hospital pricing to McDonald’s who knows how profits will be impacted if they so much as add another pickle to a hamburger.
Nobody can tell you what a tonsillectomy costs, or the profit earned from the procedure. Even for hospital IDNs, the same service will be priced differently, will be charged differently, and will be reimbursed differently.

Through acquisition and mismanagement many hospitals have multiple occurrences of large business processes; to name a few—admissions, IT, HR, payroll, pharmacy.

The time has come to separate the hospital business model into two components; the business of healthcare—how it is run, and the healthcare business—the care component. Care is delivered using a best-process model, whereas some will argue the business of healthcare is often managed no better than a lemonade stand.

There are no measures used by hospitals that allow them to calculate the ROI of a patient or a physician over five or ten years. There is no Patient Equity Management process to reduce patient or physician churn.

Large hospitals have spent more than $100,000,000 to implement failed EHRs—sixty percent of them fail. Hospitals are rushing through their implementations to try to secure minimal ARRA payments. Many hospitals are on EHR 2.0 thinking that by changing their EHR vendor they will have a better chance of succeeding. To that model they hope to incorporate ACOs.

Maybe before they boldly go where no man has gone before, they should pause and come up with a real plan of attack.

EHR: Children of the Corn

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Not in the Stephen King way.  During the late fall, my middle school friends and I would play among the withered corn stalks; capture the flag, building forts, and on occasion being more adventuresome.  On those more adventuresome occasions the adventure included matches.

It went something like this.  We would stand among the seven or eight foot tall sepia colored stalks, and remove several ears of corn, corn that had been allowed to dry on the husk.  We would peal back the leaves on husk, and strip the kernels from the bottom two-thirds of the husk.  The end product would look similar to a WW II German hand grenade—the stripped husk became the handle, the kernels on the top third were the “explosive” part, and provided the weight needed to make the grenade travel when thrown, and the dried leaves were the fuse.

The leaves were lit, closed our eyes, and let it fly.  Then we would rush through the stalks looking for signs of smoke.  By necessity, we were in a hurry.  The object of the game was to locate the grenade among the hundreds of corn stalks before it set the field on fire.  We were successful every time but one—must have been a pretty good throw.

I remember my mother asking me why my corduroy jacket smelled of smoke.  I didn’t have the courage to tell her it was because we were using our jackets to try to beat out the flaming stalks.

Segue, albeit not much of one.  A lot of healthcare providers are also in a hurry to implement EHR.  The fuse is burning away.  The fuse is the timeline to get the ARRA incentives, or at least to avoid the penalties.  That means implementations are being rushed, which in turn means implementations will fail.

If anything can be stated with certainty it is the following; it will cost much more to revise a failed EHR implementation than whatever incentive money may have been received had it worked.  Speed is costly.  So is putting in an EHR that does not do what you need it to do.  There are no business benefits to getting the EHR box on your to-do-list “checked.”

When your haste to implement EHR causes you to fail to meet Meaningful Use, how will you explain to your mother why your jacket smells like smoke?