MIMIT Health is a nine-location, multi-specialty group of independent physicians, surgeons and other providers headquartered in Melrose Park, Illinois.
THE PROBLEM
Data in the provider organization’s electronic health records system, billing systems, revenue cycle systems, patient engagement system and marketing systems all resided in separate silos. It was very difficult for staff members to integrate, coordinate or even connect in any way possible. And all proposed solutions were extremely expensive, cumbersome and time-consuming.
“This led to incredible inefficiencies, poor patient outcomes, increases in patient and employee dissatisfaction, physician dissatisfaction, and loss of revenue,” said Dr. Paramjit “Romi” Chopra, founder and CEO of MIMIT Health. “Physician and employee burnout was extremely high due to the inefficiencies and duplication of data and information management in different systems.”
It took days and weeks to get simple information from one care team member to another, from the patient to providers and between different providers who often were in different organizations, as well, he added.
PROPOSAL
So MIMIT Health turned to IT vendor Bridge Connector to help solve its integration problems.
“We used Bridge Connector to automate patient data sharing between the EHR, from Medstreaming, and the CRM system, from Salesforce,” Chopra said. “The integration interfaces patient demographics, scheduling, billing and clinical data, and eliminates the need for clinicians and staff to complete dual, redundant data entry across systems.”
"The integration, which occurs in the cloud, in the background, allowed immediate and continuous transfer of information from one system to the other, eliminating hours of duplicated work."
Dr. Paramjit Chopra, MIMIT Health
The new technology was intended to connect the EHR with a patient engagement system in real time, in the cloud, without any purchase of hardware, data centers or extra staff. The implementation was intended to be smooth and efficient, on time, on budget, and without loss of team productivity while implementing the solution, Chopra explained. The vendor proposed to work with the different software vendors and teams in a seamless and integrated manner, he added.
“The immediate transfer of information and interoperability was intended to save two to three hours per patient per day for coordination of their care,” he noted.
MARKETPLACE
There are many vendors of interoperability and interfacing technologies on the IT market today, such as HealthCelerate, InterfaceWare, InterSystems, MDI Solutions, Melodon Healthcare Technologies, NextGate, Redox, RosettaHealth and Zen Healthcare IT.
MEETING THE CHALLENGE
The Bridge Connector technology was integrated with the Salesforce Health Cloud platform along with the Medstreaming all-in-one, enterprise EHR/practice management/revenue cycle/inventory management system.
“By connecting the Salesforce platform and the EHR/practice management systems, essentially every individual and team member in the organization used this solution,” Chopra explained. “The integration, which occurs in the cloud, in the background, allowed immediate and continuous transfer of information from one system to the other, eliminating hours of duplicated work.”
Patient engagement teams, medical care providers including physicians and nurses, revenue cycle coding and billing team members, analytics teams, management teams, and marketing teams all are beneficiaries of this enhancement in interoperability between the two major systems.
RESULTS
The integration has saved two hours of data entry time per patient per day. The first major metric, which was impactful, included the rapid turnaround of patient scheduling and execution of their care plans.
“Time of scheduling procedures dropped from several weeks to a few days since the integration allowed the rapid aggregation and transfer of data to submit a request to payers,” Chopra said. “Accumulation of the data in one common data warehouse allowed us to perform rapid and accurate analytics including predictive models for improving efficiency as well as providing better clinical care and patient outcomes.”
Further, patient satisfaction scores are higher, the organization has grown considerably, and it has seen the elimination of waste and inefficiencies, he added.
ADVICE FOR OTHERS
“Often, provider organizations assume that simply buying and installing a technology would solve all their problems,” Chopra cautioned. “In addition to the software and technology solution, a clear vision regarding interoperability along with careful understanding and documentation of the processes allows for good execution and accomplishment of objectives.
“Connecting the different systems within which the data resides,” he said, “can be a huge, burdensome task, and an integration solution like ours can ease the pain.”
Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com
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