“The EHR [electronic health record system] plays four primary roles in the hospital: a repository, a messenger, an orchestrator, and a monitor. An EHR imparts tremendous value as a repository of patient information: It provides a common dataset that can speed and simplify communications. However, while the data is there, the EHR functions much better as a system of record than as a system of communication. EHRs have actually expanded the number of communication channels available to clinicians. The most popular EHR vendors all support secure email, messages within the EHR that can be attached to patient records, and pop-ups or general broadcast notices. Some EHR vendors have even branched out into real-time secure chat applications accessible within the system.
While researchers of the aforementioned study [the most recent report on the subject from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, http://bit.ly/2xDjz7q] concluded that this variety of communication channels within the EHR were largely considered easy to use by caregivers, these channels were considered less effective than other methods. Communication practices within the EHR were not uniform, and clinicians found that the communication channels made it ‘difficult to give feedback and clarify, which could take more, rather than less time.’ Most troubling, researchers often heard about the “communication illusion,” which occurred when clinicians thought they were communicating, but really weren’t. For example, a physician may send a copy of a note and assume the recipient would continue the care
plan, but the recipient may not find the plan in the EHR or may misunderstand it. ‘You need to have that person communicate with the primary doctor…and then have them assume that responsibility and acknowledge it.’ ”
The preceding quote from the 2017 Spok.com white paper entitled “6 Ways to Bolster the Benefits of Your EHR by Improving Communications in Your Hospital” (http://bit.ly/2gxE2Gr), highlights the need for effective clinical communication and the potential contribution of information technology (IT) to meet this need. An IT solution compliant with the Cloud Healthcare Appliance Real-Time Solution as a Service reference architecture (CHARTSaaS RA) would facilitate effective clinical communication by enabling healthcare provider subject matter experts (SMEs) to automate processes such as complete, accurate and timely shift-change handoff communications with minimal cost and complexity, and little or no dependence on the provider’s IT staff or system resources.
CHARTSaaS-built apps would operate as systems of engagement with professional providers and their patients to leverage the on-premise legacy systems of record referred to as electronic health record (EHR) or hospital information systems (HIS) using secure intelligent interoperability. Furthermore, they would facilitate automation such problematic and error-prone use cases as differential diagnosis and treatment planning, and alarm/alert fatigue mitigation. Since such apps would be easily modifiable, they would facilitate both compliance with the accreditation standards of The Joint Commission that govern continuous process improvement and accrual of medical knowledge in a digitally based operational mode. And all these capabilities are facilitated by the fact that CHARTSaaS as a cloud-based solution as a service, designed for use in a hybrid cloud environment.
Please validate these CHARTSaaS RA-related propositions to your own satisfaction by reading the white paper at http://bit.ly/2vmK1Rx, viewing the tutorials posted on YouTube (http://bit.ly/2sVajvS and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5OtbCCDNLs) and also by reviewing the details of CHARTSaaS™ and the CHARTSaaS RA™ in these presentations:
https://mix.office.com/embed/19g5mpp3f6qkx
https://mix.office.com/embed/1bp3nuiwdjk86
https://mix.office.com/watch/o2y82frum3lt
Healthcare providers will benefit significantly from appreciating and then applying a CHARTSaaS RA-compliant IT solution. To do so will mitigate medical mistakes (currently the third leading cause of patient deaths. per Makaray and Daniel (http://bit.ly/1rtW6Sa); thereby minimizing patient adverse events and optimizing clinical case outcomes while maximizing the cost-effectiveness of care and treatment, and also accelerating the accrual and facilitating the application of medical knowledge.