HITECH ACT
McKay: Impac had radiation oncology and we needed medical oncology too. We tried a third party solution out of desperation, but the result was an unhappy staff. Impac had a very shallow learning curve and our staff was very happy with it. We reached a turning point when we started doing our own billing. We wanted the best accounts receivable system, and at the time, Impac wasn’t as good. But once our staff visited other sites, they decided to stay with Impac. At the time, people were picking “best of breed”. When we chose to stick with Impac for billing, it led us to a decision to stick with one vendor. That has served us well, since we don’t have to worry about interface issues. For us, it was a good decision. Plus, customer support is excellent.
Saphner: When we made the decision, they were the only game in town. We wanted a system to include billing, all clinical needs and radiation oncology, if we start offering that. In 2005, Impac was the only one who did that. However, we’ve been forced to look at systems again because we’re looking at binding together radiation oncology. We conducted a very thorough review and we couldn’t find anything better. It’s at least as good as the competitors, and we believe that Impac has very good people backing it up.
Willard: We started looking at EMRs in 1995. We looked at mom and pop systems, Varian and several other systems. We began looking at Impac in 1995 and continued through 1999. We laid out what we wanted in an EMR system and Elekta Impac Software brought it to us. It’s been around awhile, but I don’t think anyone had the complete solution until Elekta Impac Software did. They’ve always been the best choice for radiation oncology, and now they have medical oncology.
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Q. Were there concerns about security?
McKay: I have mature physicians, and we all use it for medical oncology and radiation oncology. They’ve become enthusiastic supporters. When they look at an enhancement, they’ll ask, “How many clicks is it?” They’ve gotten pretty sophisticated.
Willard: The key to our success was to put together an implementation team composed of someone from all departments. This team had a lot of meetings, timelines and roadmaps. Now that we have implementation, we have quarterly Impac staff meetings, with all 88 employees in one big room. During this time we review errors, process changes and discuss how to improve our processes. We also have an ongoing education process. We meet two times a year with each employee for 15 minutes, one-on-one. During this time we review their information needs and capabilities for using the system so we truly understand their processes and needs. We also meet quarterly with different departments.
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Q. What was the patient reaction to the EMR?
McKay: EMR is how you’re going to practice medicine in the future. And the sooner you get on the bandwagon, the sooner you’re going to save money for your practice. I get weary of people wringing their hands about the cost of EMR. That’s very short-sighted, because it makes your life so much simpler.
Saphner: I’m here to tell you that EMR is not new, it’s not visionary, it’s standard. You can’t provide services without EMR. You can’t meet Medicare requirements. It’s impossible. We’re big on clinical trials and have 225 per year. Without EMR to manage all that, including the documentation to insurance and Medicare, we wouldn’t be able to participate in as many trials. Statistics show that most oncology sites are still on paper, but I can’t believe it. When we made the decision, it was move to electronic records or die. If we asked our team to go back to paper, they’d revolt.
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Q. Did you have any problems getting buy-in from your staff?
Q. What is the biggest change at your center since implementing MOSAIQ software?
McKay: The best thing has been the tremendous calm in the office. We’re not running around, looking for charts. We had college students working for us just finding records. And there are no overhead pages, because those were always searches for records.
Saphner: Productivity has really improved. We had a legion of people in medical records, and it cost us five bucks to pull a chart. When you think about all the times you pull those charts, it was a lot of money. We saw that an enormous amount of energy was wasted looking for charts and even handling charts. EMR is always available to us, even if we’re at home. And if you have downtime at a satellite clinic, you can use the time online, approving documents.
Willard: The improved workflow as a result of EMR has been the most visible part of the program. You don’t have four health information personnel walking around looking for charts. Charts are available at the tips of your fingers, and can be securely accessed and reviewed from home on any configured computer with an internet connection.
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Q. Do you consider yourself at the forefront of technology, since you are an early adopter of EMR?
MOSAIQ®
About Our Experts
The implementation of electronic medical records (EMR) has become a hot topic as a component of proposed healthcare reforms. For those centers already using oncology-specific EMR systems, the benefits far outweigh any challenges. We gathered advice, input and results from three experts, each of whom has implemented a medical oncology EMR system from industry leader Elekta Impac Software. Our experts (listed alphabetically):
• Terry McKay, President and CEO of the West Michigan Cancer Center Kalamazoo, MI
• Thomas Saphner, M.D., FACP, Principle Investigator for the St. Vincent Regional Cancer Center CCOP, Green Bay Oncology Green Bay, WI
• Kim Willard, Impac Systems Administrator, Palmetto Hematology Oncology Clinic Spartanburg, SC
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Q. What is the biggest change at your center since implementing MOSAIQ software?
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