Three-Quarters Of Hospitals Unhappy With Interoperability, Usability
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Dissatisfaction is driving an upsurge in Emergency Department Information Technology replacements.
With a surge in patient visits to emergency departments at seven of every eight U.S. hospitals — driven by a shortage of primary care physicians, aging population, data driven industry, and the increase of high-deductible patients under Obamacare — healthcare facilities are increasingly congested, overtaxed, understaffed, and falling short of patient satisfaction.
A Black Book survey of over 700 emergency department administrative and nursing managers and more that 1,100 ED physicians found 89 percent believe their hospitals made hasty judgements regarding EHRs and ED systems between 2010 and 2013 resulting in falling productivity, rising liability, and stalled connectivity.
As Health IT Outcomes wrote, “EHRs have provided faster access to patient data and billing information, but workflow disruptions have prevented many providers from realizing efficiency and patient care benefits from the technology.”
According to the Black Book findings, the lack of Emergency Department Information Systems (EDIS) usability and interoperability to external providers is also adding to the list of ED complications. The report found 35 percent of hospitals with more than 150 beds are either in the process of or plan to replace their EDIS in 2016. The study further found the majority of those replacements (69 percent) will be hospitals currently employing enterprise EHR emergency modules who will migrate to best-of-breed EDIS systems able to integrate with the hospital’s EHR.
And, while almost 40 percent of hospitals employing enterprise EHR emergency modules state they are moderately to highly dissatisfied with their current EDIS, 90 percent report they have been denied budget funds to replace EDIS systems in 2016 and/or are being forced to make due with hospital-wide generic EHR systems.
Doug Brown, Managing Partner of Black Book, explained many of these earlier EDIS purchases were completed as part of EHR systems, with hospitals spending anywhere from six months to two years implementing them only to remove them because of problems with physician productivity, patient satisfaction, and safety.
“Most best of breed EDIS solutions, not all, are fine tuned for the emergency department environment and workflows,” Brown stated. “In contract, enterprise EHR solutions have typically been very generic with difficult customization processes and long implementations for emergency departments.”
Epic Systems fared poorest in the survey due to their inability to integrate with the best of breed EDIS solutions (86 percent) or to provide widespread connectivity to access external records (83 percent). Cerner, Allscripts, Healthland, Evident CPSI, and Meditech enterprise solutions all received more favorable ratings, with 79 percent of collective users of these systems reporting substantial enhancements in usability since 2010.
When asked to list their most desirable features in a 2016 replacement EDIS, respondents’ top six responses were: interoperability and connectivity with internal and external sources (93 percent); physician productivity improvements (89 percent); tablets and smart phones (87 percent); ease of use (86 percent); diagnosis enhancements (70 percent); and patient satisfaction (68 percent).
“Obvious game changers in the EDIS replacement environment are developments in EDIS interoperability and mobility,” Brown said, “As hospitals and emergency room physicians grapple with intense pressure to optimize processes with ED visits predicted to rise by double digits again in 2016, EDIS has emerged as a powerful solution to the challenges of a rapidly changing healthcare model.”