General HIT

If only doctors were meerly apathetic about EHR

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For those who remember the television show M.A.S.H., this brief bit of dialogue was from Henry Blake to Hawkeye after one of Hawkeye’s patients died.

“There’s two rules about war.  Rule 1–in war young men die.  Rule 2–doctors can’t change Rule 1.”

There’s a similar way to apply that logic when it comes to EHR, HIT, and new IT systems.

Rule 1.  If doctors don’t use them, the systems will die.

Rule 2. Simply having an EHR doesn’t change Rule 1.

A survey by Nuance Communications shows that 90% of doctors are concerned about the usability of EHR.  Those results underscore the importance of process and changemanagement and training.

As I wrote previously, it’s not about the EHR, it’s about what you can do with it.

My person struggle with usability–We have a piano in our home even though nobody plays it.  For some reason I’m not permitted to understand, we pay to have it tuned twice a year.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

The large provider business model–The Sky is Falling

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This link takes you to my newest post on Anthony Guerra’s HeathsystemCIO.com site.  I welcome your thoughts.

http://healthsystemcio.com/2010/04/27/the-large-provider-business-model-the-sky-is-falling/

My best – Paul

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Does it come in blue?

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The store for audiophile wannabe’s. Denver, Colorado. The first store I hit after blowing an entire paycheck at REI when I moved to Colorado. 

The first thing I noticed was the lack of clutter, the lack of inventory. There were no amplifiers, because amplifiers were down market. There were a dozen or so each of the pre-amps, tuners, turntables, reel to reel tape decks, and these things called CD players. They also had dozens of speakers. At the back of the store was an enclosed 10 x 10 foot sound proof room with a leather chair positioned dead center.

When the ponytailed salesperson asked about my budget, like a rube I told him I didn’t have one. He beamed and took that to mean it was unlimited. It really meant I hadn’t thought of one. He asked me what I liked to listen to.

“Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon.”

Within a few seconds I was seated in Captain Kirk’s chair, and Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage filled the room in pure digital quadraphonic sound. I was in love.

I lived a block and a half away. Since the equipment wouldn’t fit in my Triumph, I made several trips carrying home my new toys—gold plated monster cable, solid maple speakers that rested on nails so as to minimize distortion, a pre-amp, tuner, receiver, turntable, and stylus.

It wasn’t that I deliberately bought stuff I didn’t need. I walked in uneducated. I had never bought what I was looking at. I didn’t know how much to spend, nor what it would do for me. Looking back at that purchase decision, I bought specs I didn’t need. I didn’t realize it was possible to build audio technology that would meet performance specs beyond what I person could hear, heck beyond what anything could hear. Not understanding that possibility, I bought specs I couldn’t hear. I spent hundreds of dollars on features from which I would never receive value. You too?

It happens all the time. Stereos. Cars. Computers. Applications. Technology. Having bought it doesn’t mean it was needed, that it was the right thing to do, that it has an ROI, or that it meets the mission.

HIT/EHR: A little adult supervision can’t hurt

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Among other things, EHR requires adult supervision like parenting.  My morning was moving along swimmingly.  Kids were almost out the door and I thought I’d get a batch of bread underway before heading out for my run.  I was at the step where you gradually add three cups of flour—I was in a hurry and dumped it all in at once.  This is when the eight-year-old hopped on the counter and turned on the mixer.  He didn’t just turn it on, he turned it ON—power level 10.

If you’ve ever been in a blizzard, you are probably familiar with the term whiteout.   On either side of the mixer sat two of my children, the dog was on the floor.  In an instant the three of them looked like they had been flocked—like the white stuff sprayed on Christmas trees—I guess we could call them evergreens—to make them look snow-covered.  (I just em-dashed and em-dash, wonder how the AP Style Book likes that.)  So, the point I was going for is that sometimes, adult supervision is required.

What exactly is Health IT, or HIT?  I may be easier asking what HIT isn’t.  One way to look at it is to consider the iPhone.  For the most part the iPhone is a phone, an email client, a camera, a web browser, and an MP3 player.  The other 85,000 things are other things that happen to interact with or reside on the device.

In order for us to implement correctly (it sounds better when you spilt the infinitive) HIT and EHR a little focus on blocking and tackling are in order.  Some write that EHR may be used to help with everything from preventing hip fractures to diagnosing the flu—you know what, so can doctor’s.  There are probably things EHR can be made to do, but that’s not what they were designed to do, not why you want one, and not why Washington wants you to want one.  No Meaningful Use bonus point will be awarded to providers who get ancillary benefits from their EHR especially if they don’t get it to do what it is supposed to do.

EHR, if done correctly, will be the most difficult, expensive, and far reaching project undertaken by a hospital.  It should prove to be at least as complicated as building a new hospital wing.  If it doesn’t, you’ve done something wrong.

EHR is not one of those efforts where one can apply tidbits of knowledge gleaned from bubblegum wrapper MBA advice like “Mongolian Horde Management” and “Everything I needed to know I learned playing dodge ball”.

There’s an expression in football that says when you pass the ball there are three possible outcomes and only one of them is good—a completion.  EHR sort of works the same, except the range of bad outcomes is much larger.

EHR: A billion for your thoughts

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Every wonder how it is that all the billions in healthcare IT money came about?  I imagine it went something like this.

DC 1: Email those fellows over at HHS and tell them we should just make the doctors install Electronic Health Records (EHR).

DC 2: While we’re at it, how about we pay them a bonus to do it…

DC 1: …and we penalize them if they don’t.  Give them money with one hand and take it back with the other.

DC 2: How do we get EHRs to communicate?

DC 1: Make the states do figure it out.  They are looking for more money.

DC 2: I’ll email the governors and tell them we’ve got more billions to pass around.  Let them build some sort of Information Exchange.  They can set up committees and staff them with appointees.

DC 1: Then we can glue those together in some kind of national network.  Where are we going to get one of those?  Figure another ten billion for that.

DC 2: I’ll email the DOD, they are supposed to know something about building national networks.

DC 1: Just to get things kick-started, let’s email the troops and tell them we’ll sweeten the state pots a little more.  Get them to build these extension centers on a region by region basis.

All these dollars, so little value.  Most of it focused on trying to figure out how to get millions of somethings from point A to point B.

How did all those millions of emails get securely from point A to point B?  For a lot less than forty billion dollars isn’t it possible to figure out  how to get my health information to whomever needs it?  Email me, maybe we can come up with an idea for a network.

If you’re still puzzled, we can play hangman.  It has eight letters, starts with an ‘I’, and ends with ‘ternet’.

EHR-a doctor/CMIO’s perspective

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Dirk Stanley wrote this in reply to a post on http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/converting-to-electronic-healt.html

I felt it needs to be heard.

I can only say that no matter what we do from a technical standpoint, a lot of medicine isn’t ready from the cultural standpoint.

Medical culture is a weird creature, that not a lot of people understand. (I’m sure Glenn above can attest to this.) Docs, historically, have been used to people “compensating for them”, for example :

1. A doc writing a script for Percocet (1) tab PO QID PRN instead of Percocet (1) tab PO q6h PRN pain.
2. A doc writing for “regular diet” instead of “Regular diet, dysphagia level I, nectar thickened liquids.”
3. A doc having weeks to co-sign their verbal orders.
4. A doc writing “Vanco 1gram IV x1 STAT” instead of “Vancomycin 1 gram in 250mL 0.9% NS run over 2 hours at a rate of 125mL/hour”
5. A doc writing “Heparin protocol” in the pre-EMR world, versus an electronic order for “Heparin protocol” where *all of the teammembers know what to do*.
6. A doc choosing an EMR because “It’s the best for me” versus “It’s the best thing for my patient”.

These are the hidden implementation costs. Training docs to think along these lines is important, but nobody has a clear training plan on how to change this medical culture.

This is why, some people look at OpenVista as the solution – IMHO, putting OpenVista into a private hospital will not produce the results it does in a VA hospital. Docs need to understand there will be compromises, and they need to buy-in to those compromises, before any migration to EMR will work.

Technology only works if the culture supports it.
I can tell you there are still a LOT of cynical docs out there who are quick to try a solution, and if it doesn’t work the first time, they lose faith.

Again, I wish things were different, but as a practicing physician who sees a lot of different medical computing environments (ICU to private office), I’m really concerned about the implementation plan here.

Finally, I agree, we do need an EMR Czar, or a “rockstar” who will talk about these things openly to help change the culture to be more supportive of technology. The problem is that to talk about it openly would mean having frank discussions that a lot of people don’t want to hear yet…

– Dirk 😉

Health IT: magical thinking?

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Below are a few thoughts I submitted to the WSJ Healthblog at http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/11/12/a-doc-warns-of-magical-thinking-on-health-it/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

 

Interesting to note that they refer to the IT as it.  That’s because healthcare IT is being approached as a solution looking for a problem.  In may respects, the problem providers are trying to solve is the one created by Washington (the city, not the 1st president) mandating EHR.
If that’s the problem a provider is trying to solve, all solutions look good.  Healthcare providers need to approach HIT and EHR as real business problems, problems that require adult supervision, thoughtful analysis, and program officers with a track record of implementing big, hairy IT projects.
What’s your take on it?

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EHR leadership isn’t always a democracy

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CocoaPuffs

Cerealizable.

That’s my new word. I coined it the last time my wife was traveling and I was in charge of breakfast and making sure nobody missed the bus. Cerealizable is what happens when you walk into the kitchen and are confronted with two hungry dogs, three hungry kids, hair that needs brushing, homework assignments that need to be reviewed, and lunches that have to be packed.

Breakfast orders are shouted at me across the room as though I’m their short-order cook; pancakes, French toast, sausage, and who knows what else. What does one do? I was quickly headed down the path of self destruction, too many tasks and not enough taskers. I needed a light at the end of the tunnel and so I created one. I cerealized the problem; simplified it–turned into something I could solve. Go to the pantry, pull out the cardboard cereal boxes, three bowls, three spoons, and the gallon of milk. Check off breakfast.

In case you’re wondering, Cocoa Puffs still turn the milk brown, just like they did thirty years ago. Lunch orders began to be shouted across the bowls of cereal. Ham and cheese, PB&J, tuna–extra mayo, no celery. Once again small beads of perspiration formed quickly on my brow. For a moment I considered calling the school and telling them that all three were sick. That would solve the lunch problem, but it would also mean that the three of them would be home all day–my own private hostage situation. What to do? My coffee remained out of reach, still untouched. That explained the pending headache. Back to lunch. Cerealize it. “Everyone is buying lunch today,” I announced above the roar.

A half hour later, the din had subsided. I made a fresh cup of coffee and collected my thoughts. What had I learned from the exercise? Three things. One, some situations require leadership. Two, three children and one grownup is not time to establish a democracy. There is no Bill of Rights. To quote Mel Brooks, “It’s good to be the king.” Three, break the problem down into bite-sized pieces, don’t try to swallow the elephant whole.

That same approach works just as well with EHR grownups; clinical grownups and IT grownups. Improving the interaction takes leadership. Large, institution-changing projects involve pulling people out of their normal routines and relationships.  Solving problems will not involve a kumbaya moment–Program management is not a democracy. To succeed, the program champion, having created a vision, will have to break it down into bite-sized pieces.

saint

what’s your HIT group doing for you?

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duck

I love to cook and I belong to several internet food related sites. As an aside, one of my favorites is www.chowhound.com. Maybe it’s my personality, or lack of one, but I’m not a fan of recipes, at least not the details like measuring, ingredients, cook time, and temperature. I think that this is where the fact that I function with equal vigor from both hemispheres of my brain causes conflict—probably also explains why I had such a difficult time completing my math degree. If I don’t like the details, what else is there, you may ask? It’s more than the pictures, if that was all there was I’d be satisfied just cutting pictures out of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I like the ideas those sites generate, but I also can’t stand to be encumbered by some silly set of rules. I guess I figure that with a set of rules anyone can be successful making that particular recipe, so where’s the challenge in that.

So anyway, I decided to smoke a nice sized duck on my grill. I rinsed the bird, trussed it, pricked the skin with a fork, stuffed it with a few blood oranges, and applied my homemade rub to the skin. The apple-wood chips were smoking nicely as I placed the bird, breast-side up on the roasting rack I had placed inside the cast-iron skillet. After turning down the burners I closed the lid. The grill, I should point out, is a seven-burner, infrared, stainless steel monstrosity with which one could probably roast an entire pig or forge iron ore into ingots. Total roasting time, about two hours. I checked the thermometer on the grill’s hood; it displayed a temperature of three hundred and fifty degrees–perfect, more or less.

It turns out that it can take as long as five minutes for the grill’s thermometer to register the correct temperature. The temperature dial on this particular model redlines at seven hundred degrees, high enough to produce spontaneous combustion. After two hours at 700 degrees, interesting things begin to happen to the carcass of a duck. Upon raising the lid the entire bird looked as though it had been spray painted a matte black. The roasting rack had melted. The leg bones appeared to have been charred from the inside out—they disintegrated the moment I touched them. I felt like a helpless doctor in the ER, there was nothing I could do to save it.

Have you ever felt that way when you try to understand how any of the healthcare IT projects are progressing? How’s EHR?  What’s the impact of reform on EHR?  Why aren’t we doing more with social media?  How come we don’t have a patient relationship management (PRM) system?  According to the reports that come across your desk, everything seems to be humming along nicely. In the committee meetings, seats are filled.  The emails imply all is fine.  Looking fine and being fine are not the same.  Looks can be deceiving. Ask the duck.

By the way, the duck fat did a great job of seasoning the iron skillet, so if that ever happens to you simply explain that what you were really doing was seasoning the pan.

saint

EHR: add three cups of technology and stir

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cast

According to my neighbor, who is a woman, next week is the season premier for “Desperate Hot-wives”—her words, not mine. My wife refers to my little brain hiccups as Roemer-minutes, a little hitch in my git-along where the thinking part of my brain briefly vacations in the fifth dimension. Speaking of the fifth dimension, the dimension, not the sixties rock group, I was reading up on it the other day. There’s this professor of theoretical physics from Harvard, Lisa Randall, who happens to look a little like Marcia Cross who portrays Bree Van De kamp—actually she looks more like Jodi Foster. See how quickly this all ties together? Anyway, Dr. Randall has developed a theory about how the universe is warped—something many of us expected. According to her model, the reason gravity appears so weak is that the universe is actually warped by a hidden fifth dimension—must be why we haven’t seen it, because it’s hidden—and our gravity is just the leftovers from the dark side.

For the inherently curious, in mathematical terms her equation is, ds2=dr2+e-kr(dxm dxn hmn). That was helpful, wasn’t it? Here’s where it gets complicated. People in Europe will are testing the Large Hadron Collider to look for gravitons, theoretical particles of gravity. The collider smashes protons into one another, and if these theoretical particles appear then disappear that somehow proves the theory. However, and depending whether you’re a glass half-full or a glass half-empty kind of person, this is a rather big however, we could all die. This is where the distinctions between the meanings of the words possible and probable become rather important.


According to this whole other branch of physics, something quite unpleasant could happen, the creation of doomsday phenomena, including microscopic black holes that would grow instantaneously and swallow the earth, and strangelets that could transform the earth into a dead dense lump. Could it happen? Yes. Will it? Probably not. So there you have it.

Where does that leave us? Assuming that it does, leave us, that is, alive, it makes the notion of implementing EHR seem just a tad more simplistic. At least we won’t be creating any black holes. So, set your phasers for stun and let us begin again. To implement EHR in your organization you need a champion, a sponsor. Someone who isn’t afraid to say, ‘follow me’. As we said before, this type of project does not lend well to the notion of ‘add three cups of technology and stir’. The champion is needed not so much for figuring out the shape of things to come, but for their ability to cause those things to be implemented within the organization. This person should have ready access to resources, dollars, and the ear of someone very senior in your firm. Next time we’ll begin to take a look at the champion’s role.

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