Most organizations fail at innovation because they fail at change.

Truly effective healthcare software has the power to transform your business processes, workflow and workplace for the better. Many of these software procurements are driven by IT and have the necessary support of clinical executives.

However, the only way the true, transformative power of your new software can be realized is through employee adoption of the new technologies and processes. Committed, comprehensive buy-in from all affected stakeholders is mandatory if your software investments are to gain traction and deliver benefits to the organization, the users and patients alike.

True health care innovation can only take place if disciplined change management principles are coupled with clinical and operational expertise and product knowledge to guide an organization down a tried and tested path to change adoption.

Time and again, we hear from our customers that they feel their IT investment hasn’t quite delivered on its promise of process and workflow improvement. When we dig a little deeper, we discover clinicians have not been adequately trained on the software or that workflows and processes haven’t been effectively redesigned to leverage the power of the new technology. Invariably, employees are frustrated as something that was supposed to improve their work day is seemingly hindering it instead. For example, one hospital stakeholder complained:

“Small issues post-implementation were left unresolved leading to workarounds and dissatisfaction.”

What happened at that organization wasn’t a poor software investment but rather, a poor investment in training, change management and adoption. Rather than feeling empowered by the new software, the users felt confused and abandoned and were compelled to revert to old ways of conducting business – essentially negating the potential ROI of its investment in radiology software.

These issues of change adoption are easily addressed and absolutely vital to a project’s success. When your organization is implementing new technology, be sure you partner with a vendor who can support activities around implementation readiness, go-live and post go-live by combining three capabilities:

• Clinical
• Operations
• Change Management

In other words, your vendor should help customers address challenges associated with change by offering change management services delivered by consultants with specific medical imaging, clinical and operational expertise.

These consultants should employ customized diagnostic tools to identify and calibrate organizational performance to industry benchmarks and subsequently, identify and address the organization’s pain points.

Further, they should collaborate with the client throughout this phase and equip them with the skills and tools necessary to create a more agile, efficient imaging department.  Moving forward, the customer will then be able to conduct interventions on their own and address the root causes of work flow, staffing and technical problems themselves.

For more information on how Change Healthcare can help you navigate the IT adoption process, contact us.

The post Why Change Management Is Crucial for Maximizing the Potential of Health IT Investment appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

A vendor neutral archive (VNA) can be more than an image repository. When implemented as part of an overall enterprise strategy, it can enhance workflow, increase productivity, and improve patient care.

An Enterprise imaging strategy integrates images and patient data and makes them accessible throughout a health system to any authorized user on any device. It incorporates workflows that allow users to consistently view, exchange, analyze, manage, and store, all the imaging and data across a healthcare system.

The VNA is a crucial component to an enterprise strategy, and if organizations consider it from both an IT and a clinical perspective, it can be the foundation of for an enterprise imaging solution that equips a healthcare organization to go the next level in value-based care.

What are the benefits of such a transformation? What does it take to achieve? What criteria indicate success? Let’s review each of these questions. 

Benefits of VNA transformation

Cardiology and radiology PACS generally store departmental images, but not images from other ‘ologies or acquired outside their departmental modalities, like photographs taken on mobile phones. These departmental systems are often siloed, and clinicians are limited to viewing the images in their own area.

With the right platform, a vendor neutral archive can break down these silos and consolidate images from various specialties, along with patient data from the electronic medical record (EMR). The result is a standardized view on any device that shows the image side by side with the appropriate patient record.

A VNA can enhance physician collaboration across departments and facilities, and ultimately, improve patient care by giving clinicians the imaging and patient data they need for better-informed diagnoses. It also helps generate cost savings through improved workflows and increased efficiencies. 

Achieving Enterprise Imaging

Implementing and maintaining an effective enterprise imaging solution is an ongoing process.

The first stage creates the foundation in a repository,  But when implementing this foundation, you must ensure it supports the distinctive workflows that are necessary in highly complex imaging departments. Customers need to look beyond the simple feature/functionality to know what is needed to be successful and provide systems that are flexible and scalable to support future growth.

With a strong foundation in place, workflows improve. When relevant clinical data is available alongside images,  workflows become more efficient as clinicians spend less time tracking down images and logging in and out of unfamiliar solutions. Interoperable solutions enable a broader understanding of patients’ health status and gives clinicians context so they can deliver more confident, quicker, more accurate diagnoses.

Clinical decision support tools can be used to analyze all the structured and unstructured data now available in the VNA. This level of information enables clinicians to identify effective treatments and care plans for individual patients or specific populations. An oncologist, for example, could analyze tumor images and compare her patient’s image to those from a large patient cohort. She then could evaluate the treatments and outcomes from patients with similar tumors to better inform her patient’s treatment plan.

Ensuring a VNA becomes the core of an effective enterprise imaging solution is a process. Once completed, the resulting benefits can be far reaching.

Criteria for Enterprise Imaging Success

To be successful, an enterprise imaging solution should streamline and simplify complex processes so health systems can efficiently and effectively manage their core operations. It should enable seamless access and easy report sharing all day, every day regardless of location.

In addition, the management solution and associated reports should be suitable for every department including radiology, cardiology, endoscopy or other disciplines. It should deliver increased reporting efficiencies for radiology and site agnostic reporting of radiology imaging. At the same time, it should deliver excellent governance and access control.

By itself, a VNA is a useful repository of imaging and clinical data. With the right technology, vendor partners, and processes, it can be so much more.

Intrigued? Learn more in our latest interactive eBook: Enterprise Imaging Inspirations: How to Explore, Invent and Transform Diagnostic Imaging.

The post Beyond the Repository: Clinical Benefits of a VNA appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Editor’s Note: The following article was recently published on ITN website and is reprinted here with permission.

Between 2010 and 2013, U.S. hospitals spent $47 billion annually on information technology (HIT), according to the American Hospital Association.  In 2014, nearly all (97 percent) of the hospitals tracked by the U.S. government possessed a certified electronic health records systems, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT.  But, because patients use multiple providers in multiple locations and these locations may be in hospitals, physician offices, post-acute care facilities, pharmacies, retail clinics, labs and imaging facilities, it is difficult to put all the relevant medical information in the hands of those who need it.

Years of IT specialism has spawned disparate systems driven by particular strategies for handling specific types of data. Imaging specialists benefitted first through picture archiving and communications systems.  Other specialists and general practitioners followed with electronic medical records systems.

Today, as data are being spread across the enterprise and among specialties, the strategies that guided the acquisition, storage and transmission of specific types of data are being homogenized to allow access to caregivers in multiple  departments and across enterprises regardless of the type of department or whether those data were collected in in- or outpatient facilities.

And so they should.  Patient health, after all, is the only reason these data are collected.  Care coordination facilitates good healthcare and helps keep a lid on costs by optimizing drug expenditures, testing, and billing, according to research published in 2003 by Excerpta Medica.

It makes sense, therefore, that clinical data be acquired and shared interoperably and seamlessly in forms usable by doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, other staff and patients. This is particularly needed in cardiology, in which patients may be examined and treated at multiple facilities and as both in- and outpatients. This has led some providers to seek out a “single-stack solution” — a single healthcare IT system that handles all facets of diagnosis and treatment.

To serve the patient, data must be accurate. That accuracy must be maintained during the exchange. And the transmission must be quick.

Critically important data must not be held up by methods needed to ensure its security, for example, its encryption and decryption – or because the caregiver doesn’t know the password.

Efficiency is important also for the provider to remain financially viable.  Patients must be managed effectively despite continuing reductions in reimbursements as medical practice shifts from fee-based to value-based care.

Effective and efficient data exchange is crucial for the patient to benefit and the provider to survive.

To learn more about interoperability, Contact Change Healthcare today. Or visit us at HIMSS, at the Change Healthcare Booth #4202.

The post A Healthcare Minute: Why Interoperability Is Crucial appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Editor’s Note: The following article was recently published on ITN website and is reprinted here with permission.

CHALLENGE

Hospital consolidation is gaining momentum.  At the end of 2016, Becker’s Hospital Review predicted that this movement toward fewer but larger health systems would continue. Among the drivers are an increased focus on population health, disputes between payers and providers, and lower reimbursement.

This trend has been going on long enough that mega for-profit and not-for-profit provider systems, called integrated delivery networks (IDNs, also known as integrated health networks or IHNs), have taken root.  These networks have brought with them a plethora of disparate systems, each chosen and implemented by once independent hospitals and care facilities. In some instances, this has bred a cacophony of data — a specialist’s report turns somehow from “English to gibberish,” states the AHA; values appear in the wrong section of a lab report; data are dropped from critical fields in a care summary; inpatient data do not accompany patients transferred to outpatient facilities.

Going to a unified system that establishes a single platform throughout the IDN/IHN might remedy many of the problems, but it usually is not economical to do so. Installed IT systems are often viewed as investments.  However, as medicine moves from a fee-based to a value-based model, healthcare IT must be managed to provide efficient and effective patient care.

In a single hospital, the challenge of connecting the various silos, each representing a different specialty, can be formidable. The subspecialties of cardiology may be viewed in much the same way, walled off from each other; patients entering and exiting different silos, data barriers reinforced by disparate IT systems–one for nuclear cardiology, another for echocardiography, another for cardiac cath.

Interoperability is the key to interfacing multiple information technologies throughout cardiology, just as it is the key to unifying IT systems throughout hospitals and the enterprise.  And interoperability depends on standards.

SOLUTION

The goal is to make the best use of IT, one that optimizes the delivery of effective patient care. When consolidating several PACS, for example, the most direct way is to offer a comprehensive radiology PACS that allows collaboration between the clinician and the radiologist who can view images at the same time. Ideally such a PACS would bring together data from multiple sources as in the case of several EMR systems, each of which may have created separate patient identities.  The same goes for workflow, bringing together the different ways the different specialties work.

Consolidating PACS may involve the expansion of a system to take the place of others, for example, expanding a radiology PACS to takeover for the mini-PACS dedicated to pediatric cases (a legacy system tucked away under a radiologist’s desk).  Such expansion would require data migration, just as increasing efficiency to handle the increased data load may require upgrading the PACS.

So-called “single-stack” solutions are the easiest to deploy, for example, a single EMR system that handles the records of all patients in an enterprise, one that integrates data and function.

The opportunity to do so, however, seldom exists after healthcare systems consolidate.  But there are ways to bring data together by implementing a centralized system.

In radiology the PACS provides the core diagnostic capability to radiologists. The Conserus platform extends this capability by adding tools that provide the ability to do a peer review of critical results, as well as to orchestrate and augment workflow. Conserus workflow orchestration tool is a rules-based engine that monitors and orchestrates different workflows throughout the enterprise.

Unifying data flow is Imaging Fellow, which connects data from multiple sources that may exist throughout the enterprise. It extracts specific bits of information, consolidates and aggregates them; then presents them to the radiologist in a way that is easy to understand and use.

Contact Change Healthcare today or if you’re at HIMSS, drop by the Change Healthcare Booth 4202 to learn more about interoperability.

The post A Healthcare Minute: Consolidating Healthcare IT Systems appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Editor’s Note: The following article was recently published on ITN website and is reprinted here with permission.

CHALLENGE

Many of the multiple and disparate information technologies that now handle patient data in consolidated health systems were initially implemented to serve distinctly different purposes. IHNs/IDNs “stuck” with these systems need a strategy that allows for an integrated but heterogeneous IT landscape, one that promotes patient welfare as it improves short- and long-term clinical performance.   This can be a tall order.  

Recognizing the continuing trend toward consolidation, a thoughtful IT strategy should be considered even if hospitals or other facilities have not been directly impacted by a merger or acquisition.  Healthcare providers might consider choices in IT systems that will minimize disruption if and when they are acquired; make them more attractive as prospective acquisitions; or provide options in a future where joint ventures, affiliations, and collaborations are alternatives to traditional M&A.

Developing a strategy that pulls the several (or many) different IT tools together depends on dealing with the shortcomings of interoperability. Critically important is reducing complexity and inefficiency.  Not doing so runs the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the integration and management of myriad systems. This risk is particularly high if IT tools are not well-suited to the tasks that must be performed.   

The simplification that comes from integration and consolidation of IT systems can save money by making processes more efficient and IT systems easier to maintain. It is a transformative process.

SOLUTION

Coming up with an IT strategy — whether that involves a single-stack solution or the integration of multiple systems — requires input from all stakeholders.  Problems are not always obvious. But they must be found before an effective strategy can be developed.

When developing a strategy, the means for measuring problems — and success in overcoming them — must be determined. The strategy is to draw a roadmap that identifies the tools that must be applied; where they should be applied; and when. When coming up with an enterprise imaging strategy, it is important to connect the imaging goals of the enterprise with those of the stakeholders in the enterprise.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in cardiology, which must deal with problems such as “dual charting,” which occurs when an inpatient undergoes tests in the outpatient arena.

In a healthcare system comprised of many departments spread over several campuses and dependent on multiple disparate information technologies, processes must be developed for handling differences that come from the use of these systems.  One critical example is the handling of patient identifiers.  When strategizing, ask whether the new approach will have the means to retain all the patient identifiers or must all those records be updated? Keep in mind that the need to manage multiple patient identifications will increase as patients become more mobile and travel between different care settings, a possibility made increasingly likely as medicine moves away from fee-based value-based practice.

Contact Change Healthcare today or if you’re at HIMSS, drop by the Change Healthcare Booth 4202 to learn more about our enterprise imaging solutions.

The post A Healthcare Minute: Developing an Enterprise Strategy [Video] appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Editor’s Note: The following article was recently published on ITN website and is reprinted here with permission.

CHALLENGE

Healthcare depends on patient trust — trust in the physician, in the system, in the privacy they provide. Security breaches of the IT systems that hold patient data can undermine that trust. Will patients who do not trust the integrity of health IT spill over to providers, leading some to go to other providers? Will those who remain hesitate or refuse to disclose details that physicians and nurses need to manage their healthcare?

In early 2017, hackers successfully cyberattacked Emory Healthcare in Georgia, exposing the data of at least 79,000 patients. Theirs were among more than 325,000 patient records hacked in just the first two months of 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.

Stopping cyberattacks is critically important not only for the continuation of provider-patient relationships but to prevent loss of revenue and federal penalties. Since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was enacted, the federal government (as of February 28, 2017) has investigated and resolved 24,879 cases that allegedly violated HIPAA rules. Of these, 47 cases have been settled for a total of $67,210,982.

Cyber attackers were responsible for 31% of the major HIPAA data breaches reported in 2016, according to TrapX Security. Last year 93 major cyberattacks were successfully launched against healthcare organizations, according to TrapX. Among the most substantial were Banner Health (3.6 million records), 21st Century Oncology (2.2 million), and Valley Anesthesiology Consultants (880,000).

A leading type involves ransomware — malware that typically encrypts data, which the attacker promises to decrypt if a ransom is paid. The Emory assault was a variation. Cybercriminals removed the appointments database and demanded ransom to restore it.  Emory did not publicly disclose in news articles about the breach whether it paid the ransom.

Other types of attacks may pilfer patient data for sale on the black market. Patient records include loads of valuable information including social security numbers and insurance information.

Keeping these data secure means understanding your IT systems — how they function and what their patterns of operation look like. When patterns change, trouble may be afoot.

SOLUTION

The goal is to make the best use of IT, one that optimizes the delivery of effective patient care. When consolidating several PACS, for example, the most direct way is to offer a comprehensive radiology PACS that allows collaboration between the clinician and the radiologist who can view images at the same time. Ideally such a PACS would bring together data from multiple sources as in the case of several EMR systems, each of which may have created separate patient identities. The same goes for workflow, bringing together the different ways the different specialties work.

Consolidating PACS may involve the expansion of a system to take the place of others, for example, expanding a radiology PACS to takeover for the mini-PACS dedicated to pediatric cases (a legacy system tucked away under a radiologist’s desk). Such expansion would require data migration, just as increasing efficiency to handle the increased data load may require upgrading the PACS.

So-called “single-stack” solutions are the easiest to deploy, for example, a single EMR system that handles the records of all patients in an enterprise, one that integrates data and function.

The opportunity to do so, however, seldom exists after healthcare systems consolidate. But there are ways to bring data together by implementing a centralized system.

In radiology the PACS provides the core diagnostic capability to radiologists. The Conserus platform extends this capability by adding tools that provide the ability to do a peer review of critical results, as well as to orchestrate and augment workflow. Conserus workflow orchestration tool is a rules-based engine that monitors and orchestrates different workflows throughout the enterprise.

Unifying data flow is Imaging Fellow, which connects data from multiple sources that may exist throughout the enterprise. It extracts specific bits of information, consolidates and aggregates them; then presents them to the radiologist in a way that is easy to understand and use.

Contact Change Healthcare today or if you’re at HIMSS, drop by the Change Healthcare Booth 4202 to learn more about our business continuity and disaster recovery services.

The post A Healthcare Minute: Protecting Systems and Patient Data [Video] appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Technological breakthroughs are transforming healthcare, but whether that transformation improves patient care or not, is another matter. Figuring out how to leverage new technologies in a way that benefits patients is an ongoing challenge. It’s also a common theme at the 2018 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference and exhibition March 5-9.

There are so many people working on solutions to ensure information technology lives up to its potential that 2018 HIMSS is like a World’s Fair for all things related to healthcare IT. Its scale and scope is dazzling, with more than 300 educational sessions and 1,300 vendors.

While there are a wealth of options at the event, we invite you to hear:

• Tomer Levy, vice president, strategic portfolio management, Change Healthcare speak about artificial intelligence and enterprise imaging at the Google Partner Forum in Google’s booth #2829 from 12 to 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 6. Immediately following, please come to Change Healthcare booth #4202 to learn more about our solutions.   

Other conference subjects we’d like to call your attention to are cybersecurity, clinical and business intelligence, and interoperability. These are areas are foundational for physician practices, health systems, and related enterprises.

Cybersecurity for Virtual Vaults

Protecting the privacy of patients’ data is essential because of HIPAA, as is ensuring IT systems are safe from unauthorized users. This is particularly important because the use of cloud-based computing solutions is growing, and more healthcare systems and devices are connected to the cloud.

Security breaches were high in the headlines in 2017. No one wants to see a repeat of what happened to the National Health Service for England and Scotland, when a global ransomware attack crippled key systems, including telephones and patient records.

There are a range of sessions on security at 2018 HIMSS that speak to policies, procedures, workflow, and management of health information. In addition, there are sessions on the privacy and security topics that emerge from the use of technology in the clinical and business workflow, along with a Cybersecurity Command Center with some 70 vendors.

For those looking for a more indepth experience, come to our booth #4202 and explore how our solutions can address your cybersecurity challenges. We’re eager to share our expertise with you. Even better, talk directly with our customers. John Zuziak, Chief Information Security Officer for the University of Louisville Hospital, Louisville, KY, will be available to share his hospital’s experience with our solutions.

Research shows that improving cybersecurity is keeping healthcare leaders awake at night. An HIMSS survey conducted in 2016 found two-thirds of respondents had experienced a recent significant security incident, but they had only an average level of confidence in being prepared to defend against such attacks.  

Whether it’s security for medical devices and electronic health records, identifying security gaps in your systems, or catching up on emerging security trends, cybersecurity touches just about every aspect of healthcare.

Clinical and Business Intelligence in Action

It’s not easy to turn raw data into measurable clinical and business improvements. The amount of data is overwhelming and is only growing. Sorting through it to find the nuggets that make a difference is a big task. You need the right tools, technologies, and strategies to optimize efficiencies, patient outcomes, and business value. In addition, it’s important to develop a data-driven culture to drive ongoing success.

This process is a journey, and there’s nothing like learning from those who have walked the walk. HIMSS offers a wealth of sessions with leaders who have leveraged data to achieve meaningful clinical and business results. Results like reducing 30-day readmissions with predictive modeling, or saving millions of dollars by equipping executives with data-driven insights.

Successfully managing data in a way that improves patient care and lowers costs is the holy grail of healthcare. You don’t have to search for the answers alone. Meet with us at our booth #4202 and discover how our departmental and analytics solutions turn healthcare data into timely, actionable insights that optimize revenue, cost, and quality performance.  

Interoperability  

“Standards” is the watchword these days. Voluntary standards are being adopted so that products and solutions like electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices and imaging systems can all talk to each other. This interoperability or the ability to integrate data to work with established platforms is making it easier to enable innovations like secure data transport, Google-style search for EMRs, and open data sharing for collaborative work.

There are plenty of challenges remaining due to various adoption levels. For instance, the variety of network and transport choices for health information exchanges can create barriers to sharing patient data. In addition, data standardization has yet to reach information systems like clinical trial registries, which will need to be able to share data in order to implement new payment models and performance measurements.

There is much to learn about the status of interoperability in the industry. In addition to educational sessions on the topic, the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase offers real-world demonstrations of how collaborative data-sharing among multiple organizations is being used in real-world settings like cancer treatment, public health, opioid addiction care, and more.

At 2018 HIMSS many important healthcare information issues are brought to the forefront. Cybersecurity, clinical and business intelligence tools, and the interoperability of products and solutions, are of particular importance. They are essential as we work to ensure new technological breakthroughs improve patient care and deliver business efficiencies.

Contact Change Healthcare or join us at HIMSS booth #4202 and learn how Change Healthcare’s holistic suite of enterprise solutions can help solve your imaging challenges with proven interoperability that ensures clinically appropriate care through enhanced workflows.  

The post HIMSS 2018 Preview: Security, Business Intelligence & Interoperability appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.

Healthcare’s digital transformation is progressing, but it’s far from complete. The lack of effective data sharing is becoming an urgent strategic issue for C-suite leaders, who need a complete data picture on patients in order to deliver value-based care.

New, voluntary data standards are beginning to make it easier to exchange data, but sharing data with legacy systems remains a challenge. Developing interoperability, where all partners and platforms can share data is essential.

So how do you achieve this? The infographic below illustrates the five steps that will help you accomplish interoperability for integrations and workflows.

1. Vendors First

Vendors shouldn’t limit interoperability to their latest releases, but they should make sure they include their installed base. This makes it more practical for most health systems. Scalable solutions must use industry standards as the baseline, because in large enterprises, the complexity of all the connections can quickly explode.

 2. Vendors Should Take a Dual Approach

In addition to adopting standards like FHIR, technology vendors’ products should be designed with flexibility, so they work even in less standardized environments. In addition, interoperability requires a different level of resources. For example, an EHR vendor is an expert at installing EHRs, but to create a fully interoperable system different resources and expertise will be required to share data, help people access it and enable them to consume it. In some cases, the vendor will need to conduct onsite testing of interoperability and workflows.

3. Don’t hold the customer hostage for data

Vendors should be able to build solutions that allow free access to data and be less protective of their systems. They should make it available to any consumer or workflow.

4. Health system should inventory their environment

What are your main data repositories? These typically are the EHR and imaging. The first big step is to standardize your organization’s data repositories, including the EHR, which involves a lot of unstructured data and imaging. When organizing your data, keep in mind how it is used clinically, so that the IT infrastructure will support your workflows.

5. Health systems should define their goals

Just as vendors should listen to customer goals, provider organizations should be ready to articulate them. What are your key performance indicators? Health systems should become wise consumers and choose partners who can support them with solutions that encompass IT, clinical workflow and change management, so they can implement processes that will help them become successful.

Interoperability is about connecting and orchestrating all systems into a cohesive workflow. Ultimately, data is only useful if the people who need it can find what they need while they are caring for patients. As the emphasis on population health and value-based care grows, ensuring interoperability is a critical issue for healthcare leaders.

Explore insights on how to achieve interoperability from experts who have achieved it in this downloadable white paper, Interoperability as a Business Challenge: How Context Has Equaled Technology in Importance.

The post 5 Steps to Achieve Interoperability in Your Healthcare Enterprise appeared first on Medical Imaging Talk Blog: Covering News & Advancements - Change Healthcare.