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3 Ways to Overcome Your Interface Challenges
The document presented by Rich Murphy addresses common IT interface challenges in healthcare, highlighting key barriers such as staffing and financial resources. It outlines three strategies to overcome these challenges: having a solid project plan, being prepared for challenges, and ensuring interface expertise. The emphasis is on leveraging both in-house capabilities and external service providers to improve project outcomes and operational efficiency.
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3 Ways to Overcome Your Interface Challenges
- 1. Presented By: Rich Murphy VicePresident, Interface Software, Iatric Systems 3 Ways to Overcome Your Interface Challenges
- 2. Your Presenter Rich Murphy VPInterface Software Iatric Systems Rich.Murphy@iatric.com
- 3. Agenda • IT Barriers • Consequences if interfaces aren’t working • 3 ways to overcome top interface challenges • What we’re hearing from hospitals
- 4. Top Barriers • The2014 HIMSS Leadership Survey states: staffing and financial resources have been key barriers to IT implementation for the past two years. • A 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface survey found that the top barriers to completing interface projects are: • Other IT projects taking priority • Meaningful Use • Lack of technical staff • Find a way to: • Allocate budget for high profile projects • Complete important interface projects • Protect interface projects from staff turn-over Source: 25th Annual HIMSS Leadership Survey and Healthcare Informatics 2014 Interfaces Survey
- 5. If interfaces aren’tworking When interfaces go down and systems stop talking to each other, caregivers cannot quickly access vital patient clinical data. This results in: • Manual patient care processes • Jeopardizes patient safety • Irate physicians and caregivers • Bad publicity • Non-compliance bringing fines and penalties
- 6. #1 Have asolid plan Q: How would you describe your internal interface project plan? Source: 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface Survey
- 7. #1 Have asolid plan Q: Describe how often your interface projects are completed on time. Correlation between defined process and completing projects on time: Ø 56.5% of those with a formal process completed their interface projects on time Ø 74.6% of those with an informal process sometimes/rarely or never complete their interface projects on time Source: 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface Survey
- 8. #1 Have asolid plan While every project plan varies, there are seven key steps in bringing an interface to life and keeping it there: 1. Understand and document workflow 2. Profile the systems being connected 3. Building the interface and testing 4. Going live 5. Monitoring and troubleshooting 6. Keeping up with changing requirements 7. Create data mapping
- 9. #2 Be preparedfor challenges Q: What challenges does your organization face related to interface projects? Source: 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface Survey
- 10. Addressing Top Challenges MeaningfulUse taking priority – take advantage of the lull between Stage 2 and Stage 3 Other IT projects having higher priority – having clear project plans will allow you to prioritize and implement your interfaces faster Lack of technical staff – be honest about your staff capabilities and set them and you up for success Vendor delays –make sure that you have someone (internal or external resource) project managing the implementation
- 11. #2 Be preparedfor challenges When building your interface strategy, consider your staff’s ability to meet these seven major challenges: 1. Troubleshooting disparate systems 2. Educating staff on building interfaces 3. Falling behind on other critical IT projects 4. Having the time to build & manage all interface projects 5. Being available 24/7 for emergencies 6. Managing the high risks when interfaces crash 7. Justifying the high cost of in-house interface work
- 12. #3 Ensure InterfaceExpertise Many healthcare IT groups find that they don’t have the time or manpower to build and manage the typical interface workload. The options available are: • Performing all interface work in- house which may require extensive training • Hiring an interface service provider • A combination of the two
- 13. #3 Ensure InterfaceExpertise Q: When hiring new staff, do you struggle to find people with healthcare IT integration experience? Source: 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface Survey
- 14. #3 Ensure InterfaceExpertise It’s important to analyze your in-house interface management capabilities from many angles by asking these questions: • Bandwidth to finish low and high profile projects? • Can you cost-effectively coordinate this activity? • Should you deploy an interface engine? • What is your internal level of interface expertise? • Can qualified team members monitor 24/7/365? • Can your IT team scale up and down as needed? • What is your knowledge of regulations?
- 15. #3 Ensure InterfaceExpertise Interface service providers can take the burden of any or all of these tasks off your shoulders: • Handling full project management • Providing technical expertise • Leveraging existing relationships with Health System Vendors • Maintaining interface best practices • Accessing specialized tools • Provide flexible support options
- 16. #3 Ensure InterfaceExpertise Healthcare IT organizations need to be strategic by avoiding tying up in-house IT resources to handle and manage interfaces. Tapping the experience of an outside provider: • More cost-effective • Minimize risk to interface projects when employees leave or retire • Increase staff productivity • Shorten implementation timelines • Achieve higher quality deployments • Reduce the risk of interface and project failure • Rest easy, even on holidays, with dependable 24/7/365 support
- 17. What your peersare saying “It was such a good experience working with Iatric Systems. We just sat down, talked about the goals and did a really good scope document, and then we implemented it. Iatric Systems was able to do some really cool stuff for us with the IIM, both to get the progress notes, and do the patient matching for the ADT interface.” - Clark Averill, Director of Information Technology St. Luke’s Hospital “We couldn’t have achieved this degree of integration between MEDHOST and McKesson without the expertise of Iatric Systems.” - Joy Huntington, Clinical Nurse Specialist Roper Saint Francis Healthcare
- 18. Contact Us Follow Us ContactUs Iatric Systems Account Executive info@iatric.com
Editor's Notes
- #4 OPENING: Thank you, Amanda. Thank you everyone for joining our Webcast today. -Today I’d like to discuss some key ways for you and your team to overcome your interface challenges. -In today’s Hospital IT environment, interfaces are critical to your hospital’s efficiency and ability to provide timely quality patient care. I frequently hear customers struggle to keep interface projects on target, the reasons range from their team is tied up on higher profile projects…to they just don’t have the programming staff in-house to create complex interfaces -I’d like to discuss some of the IT barriers that we often see and their impact that these have on the larger project planning and implementation -We’ll review 3 ways to overcome top interface challenges, and what we’re hearing from hospitals
- #5 IT Barriers -In the 2014 HIMSS Leadership Survey, respondents indicated that the lack of financial support and staffing resources continue to be key barriers to implementing IT solutions within their organizations. -19% of respondents indicated that lack of adequate financial resources/budgetary considerations was a barrier and 18% indicated that a lack of staffing resources was a barrier. -Both of these were also the top barriers identified in the 2013 survey A 2014 Healthcare Informatics Interface survey took it a step further to find out specifically for interfaces, what were the top barriers to being able to complete these projects. There were 3 main barriers – Other IT projects taking priority, including Meaningful Use projects, and the lack of ability to have or find technical staff to get interfaces implemented. There is a way to stay within your allocated budget for your high profile IT projects AND complete the important interface projects. You can even protect your interface projects if you loose a key IT staff member (they leave the company or retire) or have difficulty finding new staff that understand the health industry. We can help by sharing these 3 Ways to Overcome your interface challenges.
- #6 If interfaces aren’t working properly the stakes are high: When interfaces go down and systems stop talking to each other, some of the consequences are: -Caregivers cannot quickly access vital patient clinical data. - Clinicians resort to manual patient care processes and workflow - Patient safety is jeopardized when Information is not available to clinicians - Irate physicians and caregivers - Bad publicity - Non-compliance bringing fines and penalties
- #7 The first way to overcome these interface challenges is to have a solid plan in place. From the Healthcare Informatics survey, 34% said they only had a quickly sketched out or informal plan. Hopefully you are in the 61%, but if you are on this call, maybe you fall into the 34%!
- #8 There is a direct correlation to having a solid plan and completing your interface projects on time. From the same survey, the majority that have a formal process completed their projects on time, while those that had an informal process only sometimes, rarely or never finished projects on time. This can have a big impact on your department, patients and your other IT priorities.
- #9 So, what are the steps needed to put a solid plan in place? Because of unique requirements per system, varying specifications and unique workflows for each organization, we like to say “if you’ve seen one interface you’ve seen one interface”. What I mean by that is that no two interfaces are exactly the same, each will be coded to meet each system’s specific requirements and even similar interfaces can have subtle differences. While every project varies, there are several consistent steps in bringing an interface up and keeping it there: - Understand and document workflow - Review of the systems being connected - Interface build and testing (point-to-point or use an interface engine for multiple interfaces…) - Going LIVE - Monitoring and troubleshooting - Keeping up with changing requirements (ex: 3rd party/HIS system software upgrades) - Create data mapping
- #10 The second way to overcome your interface challenges is know what your specific challenges are and be prepared to address them. You may fall into one of these categories too. The top responses showed that the top barriers are Meaningful Use and Other IT projects having a higher priority – I am sure most everyone on this call can relate to that. Lack of technical staff resources and vendor delays were right behind.
- #11 So, what are the steps to overcome these top challenges? For Meaningful Use, pay attention to the timelines and plan ahead for those lulls in the timing. You are likely between stage 2 and stage 3 right now, and since stage 3 requirements were just released, later this year or early next year, there will be a big push for you to get stage 3 implemented. Put a plan in place now to address those interfaces that have been put on hold. --- Rich – I will wait until you review this slide and agree before putting the notes in here – feel free to add any notes that you want too.
- #12 The second way to overcome your interface challenges is to be prepared. When building your interface strategy, consider your staff’s ability to meet these seven major challenges: - Overcoming barriers between disparate systems - Educating staff on how to effectively build interfaces or how to use an interface engine to build them - Falling behind on other critical IT projects because of increased workload - Having the time to build and manage multiple interfaces at the same time - Being available 24/7 to respond to technical emergencies - Managing the high risks to patients and your facility when interfaces stop working - Justifying the high cost of building and management of interfaces in house
- #13 The third way to overcome your interface challenges is to ensure that you have the interface expertise in place. -Many healthcare IT groups find that they don’t have the time or manpower to tackle integration projects In-House. The options available are: - Performing all interface work for all interface projects in-house, or - Hiring an interface service provider to manage all interface projects, or - A combination of the two – manage some in house, and outsource some to the interface service provider. (blended approach) We have customers who successfully use each approach above.
- #14 The third way to overcome interface challenges is to ensure that you have the right interface expertise, but as you know, this can be difficult to find. From the Healthcare Informatics survey, 62% said that they struggle to find people with healthcare IT Integration experience. The hiring process can be time consuming especially if you can’t find the right people to get the job done. Interestingly, from this same survey, when they were asked who has hired external IT resources to help with interface projects, 62% also responded yes – perhaps the same 62% that struggled to hire internally.
- #15 In keeping with Ensuring Interface Expertise to overcome your interface challenges, one key way is to examine your team’s capabilities. It’s important to analyze your in-house interface management capabilities from many angles, some questions to consider are: - Do you have the staff to accomplish the project on time without jeopardizing other high profile projects? - Can you cost-effectively coordinate this dynamic activity? - Should you deploy an interface engine? If so, when? - What is your internal level of interface expertise? - Can qualified team members monitor 24/7/365? - Can your IT team scale up and down to meet changing project demands? - What is your knowledge of regulations related to the exchange of patient data? (ex: Meaningful Use, HIEs, data exchange with States….etc)
- #16 If your answer to all of those points that I just went over is that you don’t have the expertise or the resources, you may join those 62% and decide to seek outside help. Interface service providers can help take the burden of any of these tasks off of your shoulders. They can help in areas such as: - Handling full project management from project kick-off through completion Assisting with testing data entry needs Leveraging experience with vendors, vendor partnerships, HIS systems and databases Leveraging experience with similar integration projects, industry standards and technologies and regulations (ex: MU) Interface monitoring and support, both during normal working hours and off-hours Being flexible to the organization’s needs
- #17 There are many benefits to working with an interface services provider Healthcare IT organizations need to be strategic by avoiding tying up resources to handle and manage interfaces – it may not be a cost-effective use of in-house IT talent. Tapping the experience of an outside provider, brings many benefits: - More cost-effective - Minimize risk to hospital when employees leave or retire - Increase staff productivity - Shorten implementation timelines - Achieve higher quality deployments - Reduce the risk of interface and project failure - Rest easy, even on holidays, with dependable 24/7/365 support
- #18 I wanted to take a few moments to look at two integration projects where our customers were able to overcome these issues: Background on St. Luke’s success story – -St. Luke’s Hospital is a MEDITECH Hospital located in Duluth Minnesota -They currently have 38 physician practices with over 215 physicians, using eClinicalWorks as their physician office EMR system -The hospital came to us with a few needs: -Pass patient orders from any practice into the Hospital system, no delays -Pass the correct results to each practice as these are entered, no delays -Allow patients to receive care at any practice in the community, the patient’s information should be readily available at any practice Our team was able to assist the customer in a few ways: -The customer was not going to have the in-house bandwidth to create these interfaces themselves -Iatric had quite a bit of experience working with the Hospital’s preferred EMR vendor -We created bidirectional integration between the Hospital and each Physician practice to provide real-time, secure information exchange. This allowed each practice and the Hospital HIS system to sync up real time -This work was coordinated between Iatric, the various practices and the Hospital to make the process as seamless as possible with each practice -Custom programmer was also created for the hospital to bring in Physician Notes into the Hospital HIS system Background on Roper St. Francis: - Roper St. Francis is a private, non profit Health system located in Charleston, SC -Roper approached us to assist with integrating their 3rd party ED system with the Hospital HIS system, these are two systems which do not typically interact with each other. - We created real-time bidirectional data integration between the ED system and Hospital HIS system, saving Roper an estimated 5,000 hours of staff time annually (time previously spent searching for information required for patient care). -Electronic information sharing between EDIS and inpatient systems eliminated the risk of medication errors when patients were admitted from the ED Other benefits include automatic updating of patient records across multiple systems, improved data collection for Meaningful Use compliance, and happier physicians and nurses because the information they need is now at their fingertips. CLOSING: You now have 3 ways to overcome your interface challenges. If you have any questions or want to talk about your specific situation, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Let us know how we can help!