Introduction Community Health Centers of Florida (CHC) is a healthcare organization that serves the local community by offering comprehensive medical and dental care, health assessment, health education, screening, radiological and laboratory services and prescription drugs. Located in Central Florida, this health center serves 57,000 uninsured, under-insured, and Medicaid patients. The organization has 62 healthcare providers including doctors, dentists, nurse practitioners and hygienists. These professionals offer medical care in pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology and optometry. The organization has about 400 employees and the majority of healthcare delivery is via outpatient clinics.
Electronic Healthcare …show more content…
Cost of the System Financially, except for installment of the EHR system no capital funds were required. The design of templates and information teams did take time to develop the system but the total costs of templates was less than $1,000- a one time cost to get everything on the platform. There was no need for additional licensing, hardware or software. Training staff did require time-off from work but that was just accepted as part of the job. Total classroom time to train 300 employees came at a total cost of $10,000-a one-time cost. EHR curriculum is now part of all employees who work at CHC.
Award
The significant healthcare benefits to patients after introduction of EHR by CHC led to the HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence. This award is only given to organizations that have utilized health information technology to substantially improve patient outcomes while achieving return on investment. The Davies Awards program promotes EHR-enabled improvement in patient outcomes through sharing case studies and lessons learned on implementation strategies, work-flow design, best practice adherence, and patient engagement: CHC did all of that and …show more content…
First there is no mention of security features or if the program they are using is HIPPA compliant. Secondly, the data presented on patient outcomes are only limited to 2 years from 2012-2014. This is not ideal to look at chronic disease and I would follow the patients for a lot longer. Disorders like diabetes and hypertension often take years to manifest their complications. Plus, one would like to see if EHR introduction makes a change in long term delivery of healthcare. Third I would also compare the data to national statistics. Medicare has a PQRS program which monitors quality of care and the data are compared nationally-this is the best way to determine where the hospital stands in comparison to others not only in the state of Florida but in the country. CHC did not compare itself to any other hospital so while the numbers look great, is it delivering better care than others? Fourth, CHC did not release its financial data- did the introduction of EHR improve the finances? Did it help lower costs? It would have been nice to see if introduction of EHR leads to profitability (after all that is why Affordable Care Act has been pushing EHR-cut costs and improve quality of care). In any case, for the future I would look at many more chronic disorders and analyze data from screening tests to see if the morbidity is decreasing or the cancer rates are diminishing.
Electronic Healthcare …show more content…
Cost of the System Financially, except for installment of the EHR system no capital funds were required. The design of templates and information teams did take time to develop the system but the total costs of templates was less than $1,000- a one time cost to get everything on the platform. There was no need for additional licensing, hardware or software. Training staff did require time-off from work but that was just accepted as part of the job. Total classroom time to train 300 employees came at a total cost of $10,000-a one-time cost. EHR curriculum is now part of all employees who work at CHC.
Award
The significant healthcare benefits to patients after introduction of EHR by CHC led to the HIMSS Nicholas E. Davies Award of Excellence. This award is only given to organizations that have utilized health information technology to substantially improve patient outcomes while achieving return on investment. The Davies Awards program promotes EHR-enabled improvement in patient outcomes through sharing case studies and lessons learned on implementation strategies, work-flow design, best practice adherence, and patient engagement: CHC did all of that and …show more content…
First there is no mention of security features or if the program they are using is HIPPA compliant. Secondly, the data presented on patient outcomes are only limited to 2 years from 2012-2014. This is not ideal to look at chronic disease and I would follow the patients for a lot longer. Disorders like diabetes and hypertension often take years to manifest their complications. Plus, one would like to see if EHR introduction makes a change in long term delivery of healthcare. Third I would also compare the data to national statistics. Medicare has a PQRS program which monitors quality of care and the data are compared nationally-this is the best way to determine where the hospital stands in comparison to others not only in the state of Florida but in the country. CHC did not compare itself to any other hospital so while the numbers look great, is it delivering better care than others? Fourth, CHC did not release its financial data- did the introduction of EHR improve the finances? Did it help lower costs? It would have been nice to see if introduction of EHR leads to profitability (after all that is why Affordable Care Act has been pushing EHR-cut costs and improve quality of care). In any case, for the future I would look at many more chronic disorders and analyze data from screening tests to see if the morbidity is decreasing or the cancer rates are diminishing.