Health Management Associates – Multi-Hospital Chain
Rescuing an EMR project to meet Meaningful Use requirements on time
Recently, Meaningful Use guidelines suddenly changed for hospitals across the country.
A large hospital was at risk of incurring Meaningful Use penalties—and squandering a project that had already taken more than 18 months.
Client
Before being acquired, our client provided services to dozens of hospitals in 15 states, overseeing 11,000 beds and 3.5 million patient interactions per year.
Problem
A project to modernize ordering to meet Meaningful Use guidelines had stalled after 18 months.
Solution
Provisions implemented out the ordering system to an initial hospital within three months—then rolled it out to more than 60 additional facilities across the organization.
Benefit
The hospital company met its MU guidelines—at a significant cost-savings.
The Challenge
A manual process—doctors writing orders by hand on charts—was causing missed or delayed patient orders. Meaningful Use guidelines required our client to put an electronic ordering system in place, but the implementation phase of the project was stalled after 18 months.
The Solution
Our client had worked with us previously on another project, rolling out 60+ emergency departments on Medhost in 18 months, so they turned to us for help with electronic ordering. They requested that we finish the alpha site and then implement it organization-wide.
Within 90 days of signing on, an experienced Provisions project manager had led the alpha hospital’s implementation to completion by prioritizing tasks and refocusing the work on appropriate and obtainable milestones and deadlines.
We then rolled out the application to 62 remaining hospitals before the Meaningful Use Stage 2 deadline.
The Results
Provisions Group was responsible for vendor management, data integration between disparate systems, consultant training and orientation, and more on the multimillion-dollar project. We also developed physician adoption plans and a continuing support structure.
By the end of the two-and-a-half year project, we had saved our client $2M, or roughly 7% of projected costs—and every hospital in which we implemented the system met their Meaningful Use Stage 1 or Stage 2 guidelines for physician ordering.
The Bottom Line
By using our experience at implementing large, complex projects, we brought our client in well under budget—and helped them dodge large MU penalties. More importantly, we helped bring better healthcare to millions of people across the United States.
