Industry Insight

NJPR Celebrates 40th Anniversary

NJPR Hospital and Medical Support Services is celebrating 40 years of providing high-quality support services to the health care community.

NJPR Hospital and Medical Support Services was founded in 1974 as a medical peer review organization serving the New Jersey counties of Bergen, Morris, Sussex, and Warren. By the 1980s, NJPR was well recognized for medical coding support services and coding seminars to assist hospitals with the complexities of coding, billing, and regulatory requirements. In 1991, the company began providing medical transcription services. Throughout the years, the company focused on delivering exceptional customer service, building a level of trust with their clients, and offering quality services to meet growing industry needs. In 2009, NJPR acquired Normann Staffing Services, a recognized name in temporary staffing throughout Northern New Jersey.

Establishing long-term client relationships is a key mission at NJPR; many of their clients have been working with them for more than 30 years. “NJPR is like an extension of my department, very engaged and in tune with our functions,” says Debra Hall, RHIA, director of HIM at Hackensack University Medical Center (HackensackUMC), who has worked with NJPR during her 13 years at HackensackUMC for various services, including coding, medical transcription, and coding education.

Excellent customer service is not just an action at NJPR; it’s company culture. The employees of NJPR pride themselves on being customer oriented. The personal approach and dedication to providing quality work is what sets NJPR apart from other companies in the industry and what maintains their expanding clientele. Denise Bino, RHIT, director of medical records at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center, says, “The quality and professionalism of their staff has been of the highest caliber. NJPR is a local company that provides us with customized services. They have always worked with us to enhance the quality of services we provide to our patients.”

Longevity of employee service is a hallmark of the company. “Our employees are as important as our clients. We focus on their needs for a work-life balance,” says Barbara J. Parmese, president of NJPR. Like many of the clients, many employees have been with NJPR for more than 20 years. NJPR finds time to connect with all of their employees on a personal level, even though most of them are located throughout the United States.

“We want to do well because they treat us so well,” says Lynn Cole, administrative support in the transcription division.

“Without a doubt, NJPR has been successful for 40 years because of its dedication to meaningful relationships with their employees and clients,” says Michele Miskiv, RN, CCS, senior health information consultant and educator for NJPR for 20 years. “That is what will continue to sustain the company for years to come.”

— Source: NJPR Hospital and Medical Services

CHIME Announces New Board Members

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is pleased to announce the election of members Myra Davis; Liz Johnson, RN-BC, BSN, MS; and Albert Oriol to its board of trustees.

Davis is the senior vice president of information management and CIO at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. A member of CHIME since 2007 and the recipient of the 2013 CHIME Transformational Leadership Award, Davis has 25 years of experience leading IT.

Johnson is chief clinical informatics officer and vice president of applied clinical informatics at Tenet Healthcare in Dallas. A member since 2003, she has served several advisory roles for CHIME including the Advocacy Leadership Team and Policy Leadership Council. Johnson, who was recently honored with the 2014 CHIME Federal Public Policy Award, is also a faculty member of the CHIME Healthcare CIO Boot Camp. She is both a certified health care CIO (CHCIO) and CHIME fellow, and has more than 30 years of combined executive and nursing experience.

With more than 20 years of IT experience, Oriol is vice president of information management and CIO at Rady Children's Hospital and Health Center in San Diego. A CHIME member since 2006, Oriol has served on several committees including the Policy Steering Committee and Advocacy Leadership Team.

CHIME is also pleased to announce the election of Frank A. Nydam to its foundation board of directors. Nydam is the senior director of health care solutions and health care chief technology officer at VMware were he leads health care solutions, strategy, and market development. He joined VMware in 2002 and has been focused primarily on the application of virtualization technologies in the life sciences and health care provider industry segments.

CHIME's newly elected board members will begin their three-year terms January 1, 2015.

In addition, the current CHIME board of trustees elected officers for the 2016 board: Marc Probst, CIO and vice president of information systems for Intermountain Healthcare, will serve as chair; Indranil "Neal" Ganguly, MBA, FCHIME, CHCIO, vice president and CIO of JKF Health System, will serve as treasurer; and Cara Babachicos, CHCIO, CIO and corporate director of information systems, community hospitals, and nonacute sites at Partners Healthcare, will serve as secretary. They will serve in an "elect" role next year along with the 2015 board officers: Chuck Christian, FCHIME, CHCIO (chair); Gretchen Tegethoff, FCHIME, CHCIO (treasurer); and Pamela Arora (secretary).

— Source: The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives

HIT Spurs Success of Patient-Centered Care

Primary care physicians practicing in a model of coordinated, team-based care that leverages HIT are more likely to give patients recommended preventive screening and appropriate tests than physicians working in other settings, according to research published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study, which compared the quality of care by physicians using the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) delivery model with care from physicians in non-PCMH practices, provides evidence that the previously unproven but popular model effectively provides care for patients.

“The study showed that primary care physicians participating in PCMHs improved their quality of care over time at a significantly higher rate than their non-PCMH peers,” says lead author Lisa Kern, MD, MPH, an associate professor of health care policy and research at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The PCMH model combines electronic health records with organizational changes, including changes in the roles and responsibilities of clinicians and staff. It was the combination of EHRs plus organizational changes that was associated with the greatest quality improvement; EHRs alone were not enough.”

The prospective cohort study evaluated health care in New York’s Hudson Valley, where providers and payers operate independently. Researchers examined how care quality changed over three years (2008 to 2010) in 13 primary care practices that used EHRs and became PCMHs over the course of the study compared with 64 practices that used EHRs but were not PCMHs and 235 non-PCMH practices that used paper-based systems to store patient health information.

The researchers compared medical claims from more than 140,000 commercially insured patients across 10 quality measures, such as eye exams, hemoglobin A1c testing to monitor blood glucose levels, and lipid testing for patients with diabetes; breast and colorectal cancer screenings; and recommended tests for children with sore throats. They found that, over time, physician practices using the PCMH model scored between 1 and 9 percentage points higher than did non-PCMH practices on four of the 10 measures. Overall, the likelihood of receiving recommended care in PCMHs was 6% higher than in the group that used EHRs and 7% higher than in the group that used paper records. The PCMH effect was independent of EHR technology, which, on its own, seemed insufficient to achieve improvements in care.

The authors suggested that changes to organizational culture necessitated by the PCMH seemed to play a role in improving quality of care. PCMHs require providers to become accountable for their performance, build teams by defining roles and responsibilities, and manage patient groups or populations rather than individuals. While none of those changes focus specifically on IT, it makes at least two—population management and performance accountability—easier for providers to achieve.

— Source: Weill Cornell Medical College