HealthyData Blog | Extract Systems

 

One of the major attractions of having an EMR system is the ability to track and trend patient data. Ideally, with a click of the mouse a clinician should be able to instantly see trending lab results to influence their diagnosis.  According to a study by Mayo Clinic, 60-70 of clinical diagnoses and treatments are based off of lab results. In fact, the importance of having complete and accurate lab results in the EMR was included in step one of the Meaningful Use guidelines, as stated on HealthIT.gov.

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If Google can make a self-driving car why can’t external labs be automatically integrated (driven) into clinical information systems?

Recently while visiting a National Cancer Institute customer that is also a designated Comprehensive Cancer Center we had a brief chuckle regarding cutting edge technology and healthcare.  Our customer, a large academic medical center, had asked us to come and talk with other departments about expanding our clinical data extraction software to other departments. They currently use Extract to capture data from lengthy pathology reports and then import the information into their data analytics repository.

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When it comes to security and PHI for hospitals, it’s best to keep out of the news headlines…

In talking with our healthcare partners these days, a lot of our conversations tend to move toward security, and more specifically, securing PHI. With the recent cyber-attacks on healthcare organizations making headlines and resulting in complete shutdowns of hospital IT systems, you can understand how this is a priority.

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"We just need to get those darn labs entered!"

I had an interesting conversation with a transplant director at the UNOS Transplant Management Forum. She said, "we have a great transplant management system, now we just need to get those darn labs entered!"

Well, to be honest the actual word was not darn. But a bit harsher. She was frustrated.  She was referring to the high volume of paper-based labs that come in each day from external sources. Due to the manual entry required to get these labs entered, they were experiencing a significant backlog and critical lab data was being delayed. As you can imagine, this was causing quite the stir in the department but there was nothing anyone could do!

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30 years ago, a fax machine, an eight-track tape player and a pager walk into a doctor’s office looking for a job. Which one of them is still working in that medical office today? Why, the fax machine of course!

Even with the move to electronic health records, healthcare organizations rely on faxing as the least common denominator for exchanging health information.

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An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Or, reduce medical errors through better documentation. Which one of these expressions do we tend to remember? In healthcare we hear quite a bit of talk these days on reducing medical errors. Of course this is with good reason. When getting data into the EMR, errors such as inaccurate or delayed results, can negatively impact patient health and lead to extended hospital stays, unnecessary treatment or worse. As a matter of fact, many healthcare organizations are now striving to eliminate mistakes and streamline efficiencies by adopting principles such as Six Sigma and other business practices which are designed to continuously evaluate and improve best practices. One such axiom is the 1-10-100 rule from Total Quality Management.

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Healthcare Informatics recently published an article most of us can relate to—that if you want to remember something important, it helps to write it down. Information is only useful if available. According to the article, Research: Access to Docs’ Notes Increases Medication Aherence, researchers at Geisinger Health System found that patients who had access to their doctor’s notes demonstrated an improved adherence to a medication regimen.

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Recently there was a new report that got the attention of my colleagues here at Extract Systems. The headline was “Urgent Change Needed to Improve Diagnosis in Health Care or Diagnostic Errors Will Likely Worsen.” According to this report issued by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, most people will experience at least one diagnostic error – or inaccurate or delayed diagnosis – in their lifetime.

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Will you ever have all the interfaces you need?

“If I live to be 90 years old, I’ll never have enough interfaces for our labs,” the lab director of a large healthcare organization recently commented. “And with the costs and ongoing maintenance, how can we afford them?”

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