System Failure or Network Downtime: Are you ready?

Posted on April 10, 2013 by acasey

Some things are out of our control. Of course no one wants to anticipate system or network failure. However, it’s a reality that we need to continuously and cautiously plan for. Last year Hurricane Sandy crippled the northeastern seaboard. Leaving many hospitals to deal with major flooding, electrical outages and failing generators, Sandy created significant challenges for many hospitals.

These situations are impossible to prevent, but there are ways to prepare. The Summit Downtime Reporting System (DRS) provides business continuity by pushing critical data to various access points throughout the hospital.

Summit DRS encrypts and routes critical patient reports and delivers them to designated downtime machines that are located in accessible places throughout care facilities. Many of our clients like the fact that DRS is designed to be highly customizable, allowing teams to adapt the solution to their specific wants and needs. Many end users also use the tool to segmenting out only pertinent reports based on their particular job function and location.

We pride ourselves on the flexibility, reliability and security functionality found in the Summit Downtime Reporting System technology. Patient care is a high concern for every hospital and care facility. Our priority is making you able to care and provide for you patients at all times. Is your business continuity plan reliable?

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Return on Investment: It’s on Everyone’s Mind

Posted on March 29, 2013 by acasey

Many prospects have been recently asking about what their return on investment will be, should they decide to purchase Express Connect, our interface engine.  It’s a great question, and in all honestly one I would expect. Of course patient care is top priority for any hospital. But, like any other business, so is the bottom line.

The reality is that ROI is on everyone’s mind. It’s understandably an important aspect of any big purchase. It got me thinking. What are clients actually finding when they purchase our products? After some research I found positive feedback from many of our clients.

We had a client last year that projected over $120,000 in savings in their first year alone, by utilizing our engine to eliminate their point-to-point interface needs. We were able to reduce seven interface engines to one, and consolidate 97 point-to-point interfaces to 36 total feeds.

By implementing a scalable integration technology to bridge its healthcare systems and consolidate its complex point-to-point interface environment, we’ve created a streamlined solution that leads to increased efficiency and improved patient care, ultimately leading to increased revenue. Seems simple enough right? Then why aren’t more hospitals doing the same thing. It seems like a pretty obvious choice. 

With the Summit integration toolset in place and the partnership formed, the hospital saw improved patient case with rapid access to critical clinical data. The implementation of a reliable interface engine and workflow automation scripting technology, the organization has increased efficiency across all departments. Their ability to work with one integration partner, Summit Healthcare, also helped to meet its integration and interoperability needs, and has proven to be extremely beneficial to that hospitals bottom line.

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Day 2 at HIMSS: No Rest for the Weary!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by acasey

Day 2 at HIMSS –

A long day is winding to a close here in New Orleans.  This Exhibit Hall is jammed with people and we have had a constant flow of traffic in the Summit Healthcare booth (#2068).  No rest for the weary!  Interoperability and business continuity continue to be the hot topics not only for us, but across the Exhibit Hall.

We’ve had countless demos for Express Connect and Provider Exchange today.  Physician office integration has presented a challenge to hospitals regardless of their size.  We spoke to one client who is planning to offer integration (via Provider Exchange) at no cost to non-hospital owned physicians as a way to direct more business to their labs and as a result, provide more monies to the bottom line.  The MD’s want a seamless method to order tests, and not have to manage the patient workflow at the hospital side of the process.  PE is a natural choice…

Summit’s Downtime Reporting System has drawn rave reviews.  We had lunch with one client who mentioned that the DRS implementation was flawless, a model for other vendors!  It’s fantastic to get this type of feedback.  Kudos to our implementation team!  We will be meeting with several vendors about this solution over the next two days.

We had folks stop into the Interoperability Showcase to better understand the current and upcoming challenges for integration.  It was truly eye-opening.  We are confident we are on the right path with our products and services.

Gotta to run, prospects are waiting to talk! If you’re here at HIMSS be sure to visit us at booth 2068, we would love to hear what you’re doing, and how we might be able to help.

 

Posted on behalf of Jim McKinnon, Executive Vice President, Summit Healthcare.

 

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HIMSS13 is Alive with Chatter of Healthcare Integration and Industry Regulations

Posted on March 5, 2013 by acasey

Day1:
Exhibits started midday with discussions about the pain points of physician office integrations. Summit healthcare provides various solutions for clients, physicians and vendors that address all end user needs with the Summit Provider Exchange.  This product is expected to be a game changer with all of its new features, and the “must have” product this year!

In addition, Summit Healthcare’s Downtime Reporting Solution continues to provide valuable business continuity with many HCIS systems. Client’s discussed the Summit Scripting Toolkit (SST) advancements at their facilities to accomplish productive solutions. It is exciting to hear all the innovated ways our clients are leveraging the Summit tools. Meaningful Use initiatives also endure conversations with vendors and clients alike.

Concerns centered around  the next steps with meeting Meaningful Use.  With many education sessions scheduled for the next two days,  there is still a lot to learn on processes required to be implemented and products to be purchased.

This is an exciting time in the healthcare industry and Summit is proud to play a useful role.  We are looking forward to an exciting and informational two days. Be sure to visit us at Booth# 2068 if you’re at HIMSS13!

Posted on behalf of Meredith Muir, VP Operations, Summit Healthcare and Nathia Karasch, VP Software Engineering, Summit Healthcare.

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Summit Interface Engine: One of Best in KLAS

Posted on February 28, 2013 by acasey

When it comes to providing accurate, reliable information concerning the quality of healthcare technologies, few organizations can match the prestige of KLAS. KLAS is dedicated to evaluating the performance of a wide range of healthcare vendors’ offerings to improve the decision-making capabilities of its provider partners. To this end, it regularly issues rankings of various healthcare technologies, which are widely seen as definitive measures of the systems’ quality.

Recently, KLAS released its 2012 Best in KLAS Awards, and Summit Healthcare is proud to announce that the Summit Express Connect interface engine was named one of the best products on the market in this category.

KLAS honors
KLAS is widely seen as the equivalent of J.D. Power and Associates for healthcare IT. It strives to provide independent, unbiased assessments of software and other technologies used in the healthcare industry. This is a complex, diverse market, and consequently healthcare providers rely on KLAS when making their IT decisions.

The Best in KLAS awards cover a huge range of healthcare technologies, including ambulatory EMR systems, pharmacy software, surgery management programs and more.

Of these categories, one of the most significant is the interface engine. Interface engines are critical for ensuring the integration of healthcare IT technologies in hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Hospitals rely on this technology to ensure that physicians, nurses and other personnel are able to easily and quickly access necessary healthcare IT systems. Without this resource, the overall value of a provider’s healthcare technology will be undercut.

Summit Express Connect
Summit Healthcare is therefore extremely proud that its interface engine was rated one of the best products in this category by KLAS. Summit Express Connect received an extremely high level of satisfaction among users.

Summit Express Connect’s customer satisfaction is attributable to a wide range of features that make the interface engine one of the most robust, flexible solutions available. Summit Express Connect 9.1 features the Summit Dashboard, which provides a centralized view of all interface activity, high-grade message logging, upgraded user security and audit trails.

For more information on what other products and services Summit Healthcare offers, please visit www.summit-healthcare.com.

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Effective Business Continuity a Multi-Phase Process

Posted on January 31, 2013 by acasey

For hospitals and other healthcare providers, business continuity is an urgent need. Natural and man-made disasters, including floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, system failures and network downtime can occur at any time. If a hospital does not have the proper business continuity tools and policies in place, service may be disrupted. This can have serious, potentially even fatal, repercussions for patients.

Hospitals should seriously consider making the development and implementation of a robust business continuity strategy a high priority. The only question for many is how to achieve this goal.

Writing for BizTech Magazine, Alan Joch recently pointed out that effective business continuity is a multi-stage process.

Setting goals
The first step for any hospital or other organization looking to develop a business continuity strategy is to define its goals, according to Joch. This will vary from organization to organization. For example, depending on their specialization, some hospitals may be able to continue providing care with a relatively small amount of patient data, whereas others will need virtually the entire database to meet their care goals.

Determining each facility’s specific needs will help hospitals to establish what business continuity tools they will need to procure and implement. At this point, it is necessary for the organization to consider its budgetary limitations. Obviously, this depends largely on the specific hospital, but ultimately institutions must accept that the risks presented by disasters are great enough to justify these expenses.

The right tools
As Joch noted, there are many kinds of business continuity tools and resources available to organizations. As valuable as these tools are, however, most are not suitable as business continuity options for hospitals.

This is why hospitals should consider investing in the Summit Downtime Reporting system. This solution ensures that key medical information remains available at all times. Even in the event of system downtime, Summit’s offering guarantees that physicians, nurses and other personnel are able to access patient records and other data necessary for providing treatment.

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Hospital Business Continuity Plans Must Avoid Common Pitfalls

Posted on January 17, 2013 by acasey

Business continuity is critical for organizations of all sizes and industries. Without business continuity, an organization will simply not be able to operate effectively, or at all, in the days following a natural or man-made disaster. While a disaster recovery solution is valuable, it does not compare to a strategy that can actually ensure that no downtime occurs.

This becomes even more important in industries such as healthcare. If a small retailer has to shut down, it may lose profits and customers. If a hospital has to shut down, it may lose lives.
That is why it is essential for healthcare providers to develop and implement thorough, effective business continuity strategies. To do so, these organizations must be careful to avoid some of the most common business continuity pitfalls.

Dodging mistakes
A number of these pitfalls were recently highlighted by Maurice Saluan for MSPmentor. The writer noted that many businesses fail to protect their data sufficiently, leading to interruptions and service failures in the event of a disaster. There are numerous reasons as to why this occurs, but among the most notable are a lack of sufficient prioritization and underappreciation of risks.

In the former case, firms simply don’t consider developing and implementing a business continuity strategy to be urgent, and so, as Saluan noted, they “just don’t get around to it.” In the latter, they don’t realize how damaging an outage can be. When data becomes unavailable, many businesses simply cannot remain operational.

This is even more true for hospitals. If a physician does not have access to information concerning a patient, he or she will be unable to determine the best course of treatment, and that can prove deadly.

Implementing the solution
As important as understanding the significance of business continuity is, this alone is not enough. Firms, and particularly hospitals, must also take the time to consider the best solutions for their unique situations. For many, the Summit Downtime Reporting System may be the answer. With the Summit DRS, hospitals are able to store patient information in emergency backup machines that are kept completely isolated from the network. If that network goes down because of a disaster, the critical information remains available, allowing the hospital to continue to provide essential services.

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Tighter Integration and Collaboration Among Clinicians a Top Priority for Some CIOs

Posted on January 2, 2013 by acasey

Hospital CIOs face a variety of challenges in an industry that is rapidly changing and has left many wishing for major changes to happen soon. A recent Health Data Management report captured the wishes of one CIO, Michael Krouse of Ohio Health, by asking him what would be on his holiday list this year; integration and collaboration were areas of emphasis.

Importance of collaboration hinges on integration in healthcare
Getting clinical staff members to work together to improve patient care processes depends on more than just effective communication – it also depends on the capacity to share data effectively. Krouse told the news source that collaboration is on his holiday wish list because clinical collaboration between caregivers and within the broad workforce is currently limited by cultural hurdles that need to be overcome.

“Ten years ago, hospitals were hubs,” Krouse told Health Data Management. “Caregivers and physicians saw each other in the hallway, the dining room or during grand rounds. Physicians don’t come as often to the hospital. Some are slow to adopt technology that keeps them well connected yet to maintain that culture of being one big family in one digital space this would require all clinicians work together to keep as connected to the clinical community as possible. ”

Using integration technology to enable collaborative care
By tightly integrating the patient care cycle all clinicians can benefit from data exchange and collaboration. Sharing of critical patient data securely and accurately can allow all clinicians to play a role in the decision making of the patient whether the clinician is onsite or a in a remote location. The Summit Interoperability Platform is one technology platform that enables just this by ensuring secure transmission of data and bi-directional flow of data across the continuum of care.

Summit Healthcare wishes you a very happy and healthy New Year.

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Strong Integration Vital as Telehealth Initiatives Gain Prominence

Posted on December 13, 2012 by acasey

Telehealth concepts are expanding within the healthcare industry as organizations are faced with meeting the needs of their healthcare community and driving industry factors while being tasked with less internal resources.  Furthermore for those hospitals that are dealing with diverse geographical locations, delivering advanced, state of the art patient care can be a challenge.

Telehealth concepts solve many of the unique challenges listed above.

One specific telehealth program can be seen in the hospital intensive care units.  The need to staff the ICU by specialty ICU physicians known as Intensivists pose significant challenges for many hospitals.  Not only is the population of these physicians small they tend to practice medicine in large, metropolitan cities leaving the rural hospitals challenged with staffing. 

Delivering this specialized level of care is critical to successful patient outcomes.

To combat this challenge head on, Avera Health in South Dakota instituted a Telehealth “eICU” care program offering remote care by ICU specialists to over 66 rural communities and 33 hospital facilities across five states.  The project has been extremely successful with significant patient benchmarks and outcomes that continue to trend upward.

Importance of integration

While the project above may be summarized eloquently, sharing and exchanging data with the numerous remote locations back to the main HCIS was quite the project. Delivering specific patient information from the bedside to the hospital HCIS was necessary to provide real-time, informed patient care.  By using standard HL7 feeds from the vital sign monitoring devices at the bedside the Intensivist could provide this level of care.  While this model could be accomplished with point to point interfaces the price point would be significant. 

Avera Health leveraged their investment in the Summit Express Connect interface engine as their integration foundation and the technology has played a significant role in the Avera “eICU” program.  Avera has been able to reuse their existing interfaces to map, filter and route information between all receiving and delivering systems. This approach has provided an unprecedented cost savings for the organization.

Ready to tackle your next integration project?  Download the Avera Telehealth case study.

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Meditech 6.0 migration can play key role in meaningful use attestation

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Tara Marchi

The relationship between Healthcare Information System (HCIS) vendors and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is, to some extent, symbiotic. On one hand, HCIS vendors depend heavily on the policies and best practices defined by the ONC to guide the development of their solutions. On the other hand, the ONC relies on these vendors to align their solutions with meaningful use standards. Otherwise, hospitals may quickly become frustrated with a rough path to attestation that is not supported by functional electronic health records.

This relationship between the ONC and HCIS vendors at the moment is fairly healthy, as can be seen by innovations in technology. The Meditech 6.0 platform, for example, features a variety of specialized functions and capabilities that were informed by meaningful use requirements and continue to work to stay connected to shifts in standards. With the relatively recent release of Meaningful Use Stage 2 standards, it is becoming vital that hospitals align themselves with HCIS vendors that will support organizations as they look to meet attestation goals.

Traveling the path to attestation through a Meditech 6.0 migration
Completing any HCIS upgrade or system migration can be challenging and this is no exception for organizations as they look to move to the latest Meditech 6.0 platform.  Organizations must be conscious of process changes, new system functionality, data migration and integration of systems. Achieving Meditech 6.0 migration to support meaningful use attestation may be an important process, but it is not an easy one. This is especially true for smaller hospitals that lack the IT staff and financial resources to support a large-scale migration or deal with technological challenges on the way. So what are your options?

Partnering with a trusted, experienced integration partner can pay dividends for hospitals making the arduous transition to Meditech 6.0.  Summit Healthcare has helped many organizations complete the migration process, giving us unique insight into the challenges faced by hospitals turning to the new Meditech 6.0 platform. Backed by a leading interoperability technology platform and proven integration migration services, your hospital can focus more on the project at hand and leave some of the heavy burden to us. Check out the latest Summit Healthcare clients to migrate to Meditech 6.0.

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