5 Ways to Improve Clinician/Staff Satisfaction

One of the most valuable assets a hospital has is its clinicians and staff. Keeping your employees engaged and satisfied in their roles is essential to optimal performance and staff retention.  By safeguarding your employee fulfillment you can reduce the high cost and resource demands of staff attrition.

So how do you ensure staff satisfaction? There are countless things employers can do to boost moral and job satisfaction.  The HCI Solution aims to help their employees sustain a passion for their work while helping minimize effort and wasted time for our customers. Simple initiatives and minimal effort can go a long way towards keeping your clinicians and staff happy.

Empower Staff

Without empowering your staff with trust to make decisions and take action employees can not reach their full potential. To have a dream team where the employees take initiative, use their talent to problem solve and are innovative they must have the authority to use those skills. Delegating responsibilities with the intent to further develop and stretch your staff with clearly defined expectations and autonomy is the best way to provide structured staff empowerment. At The HCI Solution it is encouraged to continuously learn, grow and develop.  With many of our Solutions for our customers being unique problems that have proved difficult to solve, HCI employees use creativity and their vast experience to overcome complicated tasks. Allowing the staff to enhance and steer their own job development ensures a mutually beneficial support system between staff and employer.

Reduce Workflow Interruption

Interruption of workflow with delayed system launches can put a damper on process turnover. Laggy launches to required systems is an example of wasted time that can be streamlined. The use of dynamic launches that can open in the background eliminating lag time or that can pass necessary information automatically from one program to another saves time and re-entering data.  The HCI Solution achieves this through the use of LaunchIT for our customers. LaunchIT provides an intuitive solution that aims to eliminate unnecessary wait time to open another system and/or auto populating to the desired content. While a laggy launch might seem like an inconsequential nuisance, the time adds up quickly with multiple uses. When regulatory documentation is needed, keeping the time it takes to accomplish that task is a good idea to maintain compliance.

Support Staff With Needed Resources

Supporting your staff with the tools needed to achieve makes the clinical staff operations easier for everyone.  Downtime can be one of the occasions when a good solution can make an enormous difference in the amount of work and frustration that is thrust upon the staff.  Having a solution that mimics your current EHR and allows you to view all the necessary patient data to safely care for your patients while your system is down can prove invaluable.  ContinuITy™ Downtime Portal was created with these factors in mind. Having an effective solution helps the clinical teams to continue to focus on their patients instead of the downtime obstacle leaving everyone with added peace of mind.

Automate Processes

Time-consuming manual tasks that can be automated are another source of grievance for clinicians and staff. There are many ways to automate tasks in a hospital and The HCI Solution has come up with a few.  The HCI Solution’s Data Services team uses scripting and other tools to automate compiles and/or processes.  One example is providing batch processing for numerous workflow initiatives.  Some tasks are extremely time-consuming but necessary. Batch processing eliminates the arduous effort and minimizes the burden.

Cut Down on Menial Tasks

It is frustrating and inefficient for high value resources to be tasked with menial objectives that eat up their time. SyncSolve® is an application designed to limit time on such tasks while encouraging ongoing dictionary management. Many internal initiatives are made easier or are dependent on the accuracy of dictionaries. This efficiency eliminates unnecessary manual entry and double keying. Keeping the LIVE and TEST synchronized is not only useful for best practice purposes but also saves extensive amounts of time during any system upgrade. By converting a time consuming strenuous task into a quick and easy duty it lightens the resource load and saves resources for critical  purposes.

There are many ways to improve clinician/staff satisfaction.  These listed suggestions just scratch the surface of actions that can be taken for this objective.  When thinking about the strain on staff sometimes streamlining their workflows and providing helpful tools can be enough; allowing for autonomy and growth while providing tools is even better. The HCI Solution is committed to building relationships and going the extra mile. Let The HCI Solution take some of the burdens and provide peace of mind.

Contact Us to find out how we can help improve your clinician/staff satisfaction.

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7 Ways to Limit the Work From Home Struggle

During these difficult times we have seen a rise in traditional office goers working from home in an effort to “flatten the curve”. Working from home can be challenging, especially in an uncontrolled environment that may include stir-crazy kids, significant others, and/or pets that aren’t used to you being home 24/7. Working remotely takes great discipline and organization to be successful and productive, but it is achievable. The HCI Solution was ahead of the working from home trend with 100% remote employees from the start of our incorporation. Because of the current COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely has quickly become the “new normal” so we felt inspired to offer these 7 ways to limit the work from home struggle.

1) Designate your office space

If you don’t have an office try to designate a quiet area with minimal distractions and traffic as your “office”. Communicate to other members of your household that this is where you’ll be working and to try and avoid that area if possible.

2) Keep regular working hours

Yes you are working from home, and working from home offers more flexibility in many ways. However, sticking to a daily schedule and setting normal work hours not only helps you but also your family. If they know you are working 8-4 or 9-5 then they know when to expect you. This way you also know you’re putting in the hours your workplace requires.

3) Set rules and boundaries

Once you have your office space and hours established make sure to communicate your plan to the other members of your household and set necessary boundaries. Explain to them that noise should be limited in that area during those times.

4) Stick to a daily routine

Obviously, parts of your daily routine have changed if you’ve transitioned from office to home. However, sticking to a routine as close to your normal routine as possible will help, especially if/when the time comes to head back into the office. Whether you start your day with coffee, a shower, whatever it may be; continue to start your days the same way as before. You might use what would normally be your drive time to do things around the house so you aren’t distracted during the day or offer that time to your family and/or pets so they are less likely to interrupt while you are working.

5) Stretch regularly throughout your day

Even if you normally work a desk job, when working from home you are less active than you would be if you were going into the office. Try to stretch periodically throughout the day to invigorate and refocus while also preventing soreness from sitting too long.

6) Invest in your technology and know how to use it

You may not have much say in the equipment that is provided to you but one item we highly recommend investing in is a quality headset. One that limits background noise and has a muting option. We use phone conferencing with screen share and having high quality head sets helps tremendously. Also, make sure you familiarize yourself with the technology you’re using. Prepare for meetings early and make sure everything is functioning properly and that you know how to use the tools at your disposal.

7) Keep it clean

Last but certainly not least, keep it clean! Good hygiene is about more than just who sees or smells you, it’s about being healthy and just feeling better all around. Also, keep your workspace clean and clutter free. Organization is key to working from home and if you have a cluttered desk it can be a major distraction.

We’ve all had the worries of noisy family in the background and distractions while working remotely. These things are going to happen at times. No one knows exactly what the future holds, but if we had to guess, remote jobs are only going to increase in popularity and we truly believe by following the 7 tips provided, you too can be successful in a work from home environment.

To learn about The HCI Solution CLICK HERE


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Data Definitions – Finding Where the Data Lives

What is this term “Data Definition” that everyone is always talking about? Okay, I admit maybe not everyone is talking about data definitions, but it is a common term thrown around for us folks that work in the MEDITECH space. Especially for those involved with requesting, designing, or creating reports.

A Data Definition is MEDITECH’s Term for a Data Schema.

Simply put a data definition or data schema is just a description of how data is organized and stored in a database. The terms data definition and data schema refer to the same thing. Data Definitions and data schemas are like words in a dictionary. Every field or key in a database has a definition. Except in this case, instead of a description of what the word means the definition describes in technical terms how the field is organized in a database and what its attributes are.

Keys, Records, Fields, and Attributes – Oh My!

A field is simply the smallest element of data in a database. Fields are defined by attributes like name, size, data type, length, and required. Attributes describe the behavior of a field or record. In addition to attributes fields also have values. However, when we are discussing data definitions or data schemas, we are generally referring to the attributes of the fields and what records they belong to, rather than their values. The data definition is created when designing the database and the field and key values are put in place when the database is being used.

A record is simply a group of related fields. For instance, in MEDITECH the RegAcct.Providers record contains fields like IsPrimaryCareProv and IsAttendProv.  This record has two keys. The first key is the patient identifier. In MEDITECH the patient identifier is referred to as the OID or Object Identifier. The second key is the Provider, which points to the person dictionary. This would be the physician’s user ID or user mnemonic.

Keys are used to identify a specific instance of a record. To illustrate this concept, think about this simple real-world example: Lets design a database schema to keep track of library books. You might design a record called Book, that contains fields such as: book title, author, publish date, and type of book (paperback, hardcover, digital), ETC. A good key value for the book record may be the book’s ISBN number. It is often the case though that the library will have multiple copies for a particular book. In that case you may want a separate record to track each physical book in the library.  The record to track this might be called BookInventory and contains fields like ISBN number (points to the Book record), book status (in/out), and the library user that has the book checked out. The key for this record could be a system generated number that uniquely identifies each physical book in the library.

Why are Data Definitions Important?

Reports are an important part of the modern Electronic Health Record (EHR). The first step in designing any report or SQL query is determining what specific data is needed to meet the report requirements. Then you need to determine where the data is stored in the database. The data definitions are what you need to determine where the data is stored and how it is organized. To add fields to your report, you need to know how the fields are identified (what record keys are needed). There is no way to write a report without understanding the relationships of the fields that are needed for your report. The data definitions clearly spell this out for you.

Viewing Data

When working on reports or SQL queries it can be extremely valuable to view data in its raw form. Viewing the data definitions is helpful but looking at the raw data after reviewing the data definitions can really help you understand the relationships between the different fields and records. MEDITECH has a very powerful tool called Object Viewer that can be used to view MEDITECH data in its raw form. However, this tool is only available to MEDITECH staff. For those of you that are familiar with C/S and MAGIC NPR, this is akin to viewing MEDITECH data from the “G” get function at the MEDITECH front end.

We are all bound to protect patient data and should only be allowed to view data that we are granted access to view. It would be extremely useful for folks writing reports to be able to use a data viewer tool that only provides access to the data that the user has permission to view. When working on SQL reports or queries, typically the person writing the report can easily view all the data in the database he/she is working on. Keep in mind though that a MEDITECH SQL database (livefdb, lvendb) contains ALL of the MEDITECH applications for the designated platform (M-AT or NPR). Access to view specific data can be controlled at the table level in SQL. However, often access is granted to an entire database. This type of access does make sense for someone that is writing a report.

Viewing Data Definitions

Fortunately, there are a lot of great tools for viewing data definitions. I put this table together in order to outline all of the different tools that are available and some of their pros and cons.

Data Definition Viewer

Description

Pros/Cons

Object Explorer

MEDITECH’s tool that is built into the MEDITECH system that can be found on the Report Designer Menu. There is also a link to it directly inside Report Designer.

Pros:

  • Built right into MEDITECH.
  • Can be used for either M-AT or NPR applications.
  • Has a very useful search feature built into it.
  • Can follow links to other objects on pointer type fields.

Cons:

  • Does not allow you to view field values.
  • The search feature can be slow.
  • Does not show SQL table or column names.

Object Viewer

This tool is also built into the MEDITECH system. It allows you to view the data definitions and the raw data. This is a very powerful, extremely useful tool for browsing the database and viewing data in the database.

Pros:

  • The most powerful, useful tool for viewing MEDITECH data.
  • Built into the MEDITECH system.

Cons:

  • No user access restrictions.
  • MEDITECH staff use only.
  • Does not show SQL table or column names.
  • Data access is not logged

The HCI Solution Data Definition Tool

Web based tool that is free for everyone to use. You just need to submit a simple form with us to get access.

Pros:

  • View MEDITECH data definitions in the browser.
  • Displays SQL table and column names.
  • Very quick to navigate.
  • Contains data definitions for ALL MEDITECH platforms.
  • Can use Ctrl+F to quickly search through data definitions.
  • Can follow links to other objects on pointer type fields.

Cons:

  • Does not allow you to view field values (of course!).
  • SQL key names for keys are not listed (yet). We are working on adding this.

MEDITECH Online Data Definitions

Web based tool on MEDITECH’s web site that is only available for NPR applications.

Pros:

  • View MEDITECH data definitions in the browser.
  • Quick to navigate.
  • Can use Ctrl+F to quickly search through data definitions.
  • Can follow links to other objects on pointer type fields.

Cons:

  • Only NPR data definitions!
  • Does not show SQL table or column names.
  • Cannot view field values.

MEDITECH Online DR Data Schema

MEDITECH’s SQL Data Repository Database Layout. This tool is very helpful for browsing/viewing the SQL database layout for DR. However, this tool does not show you the MEDITECH database layout for the MEDITECH transactional EHR.

Pros:

  • View MEDITECH data definitions in the browser.
  • Quick to navigate.
  • Can use Ctrl+F to quickly search through data definitions.
  • Can follow links to other tables for keys and fields that point to other tables.
  • Includes both M-AT and NPR data schema.
  • Can download schema data files. Useful for comparing system schemas.

Cons:

  • Very useful for SQL but does not include the MEDITCH EHR data definitions.

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

This is the Microsoft tool that is used to manage Microsoft SQL Server databases and to write and execute SQL queries. Built into this tool is the ability to view the database schema.

Pros:

  • The most powerful, useful tool for viewing MEDITECH data in an SQL database.
  • Easy to restrict user access to specific SQL databases. However, all MEDITECH applications are lumped under the same SQL database.

Cons:

  • Tables can be very slow to load if you don’t filter them out.
  • Not easy to restrict user access by MEDITECH application.
  • Data access is not logged.
  • For SQL data only.

Click here to view The HCI Solution’s Data Definitions Tool. The HCI Solution Data Services team also provides advanced report writing and report conversion assistance, Click here to check out our services. The HCI Solution gives back to the MEDITECH community by providing complimentary beginner to advanced Report Designer Educational Sessions each month. View our upcoming RD Ed Sessions.

 

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Testimonial – Peterson Health


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TESTIMONIAL: Engineering Concierge

Technical Resource Staffing with Engineering Concierge

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Peterson Health, Kerrville, TX

January, 2020 – Brian Robicheaux – CIO, Lisa Medovich – CFO & Compliance Officer, Stephanie Alford – IT Manager

Peterson Health enlisted the Engineering Concierge Services offered by The HCI Solution to assist with the technical deployment of interfaces/integration (converting, creating, validation, troubleshooting), interface engine management, report writing, and a host of other services necessary for optimal operation. This was exceptionally useful to Peterson Health not only for day to day operations but during their migration to Expanse as well. Engineering Concierge Services provides a virtual team of experts that possess the myriad of technical requirements and skill-sets crucial for success. Engineering Concierge Services offers a concierge/project coordinator to deploy and manage all tasks within any project(s) from start to finish providing one point of contact able to delegate the necessary support for each individual task. This service allowed Peterson Health to have all the technical support essential for any obstacle they could encounter. The service offers all the technical expertise with one low hourly rate, dispersing the cost over the course of a year, allowing facilities to operationalize and budget for needed reinforcement.

The HCI Solution sustains technical support on a day to day basis. Deciding to alleviate the strain on Peterson’s internal resources and extend their support with HCI has proved to be effective and beneficial. The use of Engineering Concierge Services at Peterson allowed them to eliminate four separate vendors with services Peterson Health can now get from a single source, saving money and time. With quick responses maintaining accessible communication is easy. Having a true partnership with a vendor through this concierge service provides peace of mind for whatever may come.

“It is a relief to have a credible industry counsel partner at our disposal during day to day operations. The quick turn around and great communication make them an ideal partner to work with. I can confidently say that our experience with HCI consistently exceeds our expectations.”-Stephanie Alford, IT Manager.

During the Expanse migration The HCI Solution provided all the testing and management of the 150+ interfaces on three different interface engines including the project management function of coordinating all the various vendors. The HCI solution provided Peterson Health with 24/7 support and access to skilled engineers who rapidly responded to troubleshoot issues. Engineers that understand multiple interface engines along with the pros/cons of use kept interface projects moving forward throughout implementation. Project management was used to work through the large-scale project of migrating Peterson Health to Expanse with a quick turn around on report writing requests.

When discussing the appeal of the engineering concierge service CIO Brian Robicheaux replies “HCI’s ability to evaluate a process and come up with a creative solution “outside the box” is very beneficial. I lean on The HCI Solution for a variety of technical needs that would take multiple staff members to match. We do not have to worry about which service we need when we contract with HCI. We just use HCI as we need them to support our initiatives. We get the years of combined experience HCI possesses to help us achieve success in our timeline. They always come through and we only have to go to one place.”

An example of the assistance you can expect from HCI is being able to jump into any problem or task at the drop of a dime. There was an incident at Peterson Health involving MM and inventory where hundreds of thousands of messages were sent out of another vendor’s TEST environment that routed to production. Peterson was able to turn this off relatively quickly but still had to manage the  messages that made it through, determine where the rest of the messages were, how to stop the rest from going to production and how to reverse all the ZPM transactions processed. HCI was able to jump in quickly, cancel the messages and diagnose where the issue originated. “I want to thank you again for being such a great partner to us and helping us with this unexpected challenge!!!”  – CFO and Compliance Officer Lisa Medovich. CIO Brian Robicheaux was glad to have this wrapped up so quickly with minimal impact “We cannot thank you enough for your expertise in helping us solve why the issue occurred. As Lisa said, we value our partnership with HCI. ”

Unforeseen obstacles or lack of technical skill sets/devoted resources no longer need to halt projects or operation. Engineering Concierge affords confidence in the ability to overcome any impediment that arises. Choose peace of mind, choose concierge.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Engineering Concierge

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Peterson Health Hospital

Peterson Health is a private, 124-bed, not-for-profit community-based healthcare facility located in Kerrville, Texas. Peterson Health has focused on providing patient-centered care for over 65 years, serving the people of Texas Hill Country. Peterson Health recently converted to MEDITECH Expanse from MEDITECH 6.07 as of March 1st, 2019.

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Upgrading MEDITECH and Consolidating our Master Patient Index (MPI)

As the HCIS landscape shifts, we are often finding ourselves involved in major upgrade and conversion endeavors on behalf of our customers. Whether upgrading to the latest version of MEDITECH, or moving to a completely new platform, our sites are confronted with a host of challenges. While this threatens to be a frustrating process, it also presents unique opportunities to improve inefficient workflows, normalize dictionaries, retire obsolete reporting methods or legacy applications, and ensure that the mistakes made in the current system are not inherited during the upgrade process. Preemptive decisions need to be made, regarding resource allocation and timelines to ensure goals can be accomplished at the appropriate stage of the conversion process. When upgrading MEDITECH, consolidating our Master Patient Index (MPI) should be taken into consideration.

Over time, an MPI database inevitably accrues duplicate records, due to misidentification or workflow errors, and if we hesitate before starting our reconciliation effort, we can easily miss the window of opportunity to move forward with a clean MPI. We all understand the importance of eliminating duplicate records to ensure the data integrity of each patient’s medical history, but there are other considerations. Improved operational efficiency and cost reduction are major factors. Missing this window will complicate the process of reconciling duplicates in the future. For example, when upgrading to a new version of MEDITECH we often need to maintain a historical link with our previous systems. After conversion, any duplicates merged in the new HCIS will also need to be merged in the prior HCIS to maintain the accuracy of this historical link, but if the records are merged prior to conversion, this extra step is unnecessary.

It is important not to minimize the effort involved with the resolution process, as this is the primary reason for missed timelines. There is no fully automated solution that will ensure there is no risk of creating additional errors, such as patients merged in error. Our focus needs to be on finding ways to be as efficient as possible during the resolution process, and on approaching the problem in a way that maximizes the results of our time spent on each task, without creating additional risk.

Our response to the challenges posed by the duplication resolution effort is our MPI MergeIT™ application. MergeIT™ integrates with the existing MEDITECH tools used to reconcile duplicates, to enhance and facilitate the process of accelerated resolution, without the risk of an unintended or erroneous merge. MergeIT™ generates customizable worklists of potential duplicates by comparing demographic data at the database level. This lets us prioritize the most likely duplicates and defer the potential duplicates that will need more investigation to a second phase of the process. When a duplicate is identified, it can be immediately handed off to the MEDITECH merge routine, to eliminate any need for redundant manual entry, and to ensure that all values are merged as intended. As the selection criteria is expanded to the second phase, any potential duplicates that are confirmed to be unique, can be permanently filtered from the identification routine, to ensure we never needlessly investigate the same medical record number combination more than once.

The upgrade process does not have to be daunting, and presents many opportunities, but these opportunities can be easily missed if we don’t take initiative and engage the necessary resources early enough in the process. To ensure we can consolidate our MPI prior to conversion, and that we are not creating additional work for ourselves and inheriting the corruption present in our current system, we need to begin well before the conversion is underway.

CONTACT US to schedule a Demo.

To learn about The HCI Solution’s MPI MergeIT™  CLICK HERE.

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