Industry Insight

HCI Group Becomes First HIMSS EMRAM Global Education
and Certification Provider

The HCI Group (HCI), an HIT services consultancy, recently announced its partnership with HIMSS to become the organization’s first official EMR Adoption Model (EMRAM) Global Education provider.

HIMSS Analytics has been providing maturity models for more than 10 years, focusing on important areas of health care advancement including EMRAM. EMRAM is used globally as a measurement of the maturity of health care facilities as they leverage technology to improve the quality of health care.

As a HIMSS global EMRAM Education partner, HCI will provide client education and consulting to improve EMRAM scores and prepare those clients for HIMSS Analytics validation as stage 6 and stage 7 organizations on the world scale.

Addressing a group of attendees at the recent HIMSS AsiaPac 15, HCI, along with John P. Hoyt, executive vice president of HIMSS Analytics, presented “The Value of Partnerships for EMRAM Growth,” which focused on the views of successful methodologies for enterprise cultural transformation leveraging technology, using EMRAM as a guide.

“The Certified Educator program is a part of HIMSS Analytics global strategic initiatives,” notes Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of HIMSS. “HCI Group’s recent certification is an example of how HIMSS Analytics works with key stakeholders and influencers within health care to bring greater awareness to the impact and value of IT.”

“Leveraging an EMR, whether you buy or build, is more than just getting rid of the paper; it is a cultural paradigm shift and a transformation of care,” adds Anthony Binge, international managing director of the HCI Groups. “Technology is but an enabler; to be successful you must truly grasp the organizational and cultural change that needs to take place through every level of every department.”

— Source: The HCI Group

Three Health Care Experts Join OpenNotes Movement

National health care leaders John Santa, MD, MPH; Homer Chin, MD, MS; and Amy Fellows, MPH, have joined the OpenNotes team. The three bring decades of expertise in IT and population health to the expanding OpenNotes movement.

OpenNotes is a national initiative that urges health care institutions and clinicians to offer patients ready access to notes written by providers after a medical visit. Evidence shows that this type of transparency in health care leads to more active patient engagement, with patients reporting far more control of their own health and health care.

In the three years since the results of an initial OpenNotes study were published, the number of patients with ready access to their notes has grown from 20,000 to more than 5 million. The goal now is to expand open access to notes so that this new practice becomes the national standard of care.

“These three outstanding individuals bring to OpenNotes considerable health care industry and IT expertise, along with vital clinical and consumer perspectives,” says Tom Delbanco, MD, cofounder of OpenNotes and Koplow-Tullis Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Santa, director of dissemination for OpenNotes, will take a vital leadership role in bringing the OpenNotes movement to clinical sites throughout the country.

Santa has more than 40 years of experience in clinical medicine and administration, having worked in leadership positions for hospitals, physician groups, insurers, state government, and consumer organizations. Drawing on his expertise in national rollouts of health care initiatives, he initiated the Northwest OpenNotes Consortium, whose members now offer more than a million patients access to their notes.

“Transparency was my top priority in clinical practice and at Consumer Reports. I am thrilled to be part of a movement that brings that to millions of individual patients,” Santa says. “If you’re healthy, clinician notes are interesting, educating, and help you set priorities. But, if you’re sick and want to be a full-fledged member of your own health care team, easy access to clinician notes is a game changer.”

Chin will lead efforts to integrate HIT further with OpenNotes. He has extensive knowledge of medical informatics and electronic health systems and will work closely with EHR vendors, helping them to develop sophisticated methods for supporting OpenNotes.

Chin is an affiliate professor in the department of medical informatics and outcomes research at the Oregon Health and Science University and a member of the board of OCHIN, a not-for-profit organization that provides information and management services to safety net clinics in support of the medically underserved.

“With the advent of the electronic health record, it becomes much easier to share notes among providers and, as a logical extension, with patients. In light of the many benefits of doing so, it is time that we engage and empower patients by providing them easy access to their own medical information,” Chin says. “We also have opportunities to work with EHR developers to enhance the patient experience and make it easier for them to interact with notes.”

Fellows joins OpenNotes to focus on Community Health Programs, with particular attention to individuals who are medically underserved. She brings considerable experience in working to introduce EHRs to the increasing number of vulnerable populations served by the OpenNotes movement.

“OpenNotes is proving invaluable for helping patients take charge of their health,” Fellows says. “I’m proud to be part of this movement whose goal is to help all patients and families take a more active role in their personal health care.”

— Source: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center