Thibodaux Regional Health System, a Louisiana health system with both a hospital and clinics, has focused on process improvement to pursue what they call “patient-centered excellence.” In this video, CEO Greg Stock and CIO Bryan Samaha talk about their use of the MEDITECH EHR and how they are reducing errors and improving clinical quality.
Advantages they cite for MEDITECH include the balance between a relatively low operating cost and proven results, as well as the ability to maintain their own autonomy over their EHR without being at the mercy of another health system. The latter advantage allows them to maintain control over downtime, updates, the flexibility of the EHR, and other operations. Stock refers to the partnership as a “marriage between a hospital and an IT system,” which now spans 24 years.
The video starts with the massive challenges that health care providers currently face in billing, staffing and operations. Staff costs “have gone through the ceiling,” but Stock emphasizes the importance of paying for high-quality staff in both clinical and operations positions, which will lead to lower costs in the long run.
Other challenges include unpredictability, especially in financial matters, and difficulties health systems face getting reimbursement from payers, and where technology can help.
Stock talks about the crucial importance of having metrics in hand to see how well each part of the institution is performing and to measure progress.
He discusses the importance of viewing analytics in real-time vs waiting a month for a report, and the impact of these analytics in supporting “meaningful process improvement.”
One of their notable achievements was to reduce the time it took to view MRI results from 22 days to essentially nothing. All the technology was in place, according to Stock, but process improvement was required to take advantage of it.
Their system adopted a six sigma process in 2000 and lean operations in 2001.
The institution continues to grow and now sees 350,000 to 400,000 clinic visits per year.
Samaha discusses how their MEDITECH EHR has expanded to meet the growing needs of the organization and its various users, now featuring a unified record that spans the hospital and a growing number of clinics and patients. For instance, Thibodaux Regional Health System’s IT staff now provides help desk support for patients managing their patient portal.
Stock and Samaha expect new AI-based apps from MEDITECH to take repetitive work off of staff. Samaha also hopes for AI to make processes less brittle and aid in recovery from failures.
Check out our video interview with Thibodaux Regional Health System at the MEDITECH Live conference to learn more.
Learn more about Thibodaux Regional Health System: https://www.thibodaux.com/
Learn more about MEDITECH: https://ehr.meditech.com/
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