Global Healthcare Exchange, which develops technology for healthcare supply chain management, has launched what it said is a first-of-its-kind tool to help clinicians with the documentation of supplies and implants at the point of care.
The cloud-based Clinical ConneXion offers a single source of truth for item information to support clinical documentation and patient billing, officials say – enabling better accuracy and increased efficiency in the OR, fewer missed charges and improved tracking of supplies.
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Clinicians in procedural areas are often required to document supplies and implants at the point of use directly into the EHR, but clinical care often calls for more products than are available in the item master list. Supplies that can't be located on the list must be entered manually as one-time items – which is disruptive workflow and a drag on efficiency, according to GHX. It also diminishes the value of the data in the EHR when its accuracy is in question.
Clinical ConneXion connects supply chain and the electronic health record, linking to GHX's large repository of enriched and validated data, linking directly to the EHR by using the provider’s item master and other data sources to reduce one-time supplies and associated charge reconciliation.
This enables more accurate supply documentation and improved efficiency in supply tracking and case costing insights, allowing hospitals to eliminate the unnecessary expansion of the supply chain item master.
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“Clinical ConneXion allows organizations to focus on supply chain data while GHX provides the heavy lifting on clinical attributes needed for revenue integrity and downstream systems, such as the electronic health record,” GHX senior vice president Tina Murphy said in a statement. "Accurate, enriched item data is fed directly to the EHR by leveraging the item master and other data sources.”
GHX pointed to the example of Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, a 1,799-bed network, which uses the tool in tandem with bedside barcode scanning and has been able to all-but eliminate manual entry of commonly used supplies into the EHR by clinicians (reducing such instances from 50 percent to .05 percent) and improve charge capture (from 40 percent to 95 percent).
"Having good, quality data has enabled the supply chain organization to gain the trust of our clinical teams, because they value the data we are providing," said Bill Mosser, vice president, materials management at the health system. He said the more efficient data capture process has meant that "clinicians are now able to find and select items with confidence and speed so they can spend more time at the bedside with patients."
Clinical ConneXion is now available for Epic, but partnerships with other EHR vendors are soon to come, according to GHX.
Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
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