· IT Adoption Center framework was developed and validated with Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA).
· MSHA used the framework to bring 13 hospitals live in 18 months.
· The framework is available to all Siemens customers using Soarian® or any other enterprise health IT solution for clinical or financial operations.
Today, Siemens Healthcare announced the general availability of a new IT Adoption Center framework that provides healthcare organizations with a comprehensive, repeatable, and scalable framework that prescribes, and measures, successful information technology (IT) implementation and post-live adoption. The methodology was developed in collaboration with, and validated at, Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA), Johnson City, Tenn., which is a 13-hospital healthcare system serving patients in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Using the IT Adoption Center methodology, MSHA brought 13 hospitals live with a full suite of Soarian Clinicals in 18 months. The most recent go-live was completed in March 2013. Upon acquiring MSHA’s 14th hospital on November 1, 2013, the IT Adoption Center methodology will be used to help Unicoi County Memorial Hospital take part in MSHA’s transformational journey.
“Implementing healthcare IT solutions, such as order entry, is an inherently disruptive process, so we needed to adopt a more prescriptive methodology that could reduce process variation and ensure consistency and accountability throughout the organization – from pre-implementation to go-live to hand off,” said Morris H. Seligman, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, MSHA.
Now that MSHA is delivering a single, integrated electronic health record (EHR) across all 13 hospitals, the organization is embarking on implementing Siemens MobileMD® health information exchange (HIE) and patient portal to coordinate care at physician practices – creating a patient-centric record of care that will be available at any MSHA setting.
The IT Adoption Center transformational framework is part of the solutions offered by Siemens Healthcare’s Strategic Consulting Services business. It more predictably enables customers to achieve their strategic, financial, quality, and patient-centric objectives through ongoing implementation and upgrade cycles, post-live adoption, and integration of technology utilization into roles-based employee performance.
“Bringing new information technology solutions into clinical utilization is fundamentally an exercise in organizational change management because of the significant impact these solutions have on the way providers work,” said John Glaser, PhD, CEO, Siemens Healthcare, Health services. “With our framework methodology we have worked with Mountain States Health Alliance to create greater alignment from pre-implementation through post-live adoption.”
Post-implementation, the IT Adoption Center enables the measurement and cultural transformation associated with optimal adoption and utilization of enterprise technology to achieve operating outcomes. The detailed, structured, actionable IT Adoption Center framework is implemented jointly between the customer and Siemens.
“We can now apply the IT Adoption Center methodology to any project that involves technology – whether it is an upgrade or a new purchase,” said Paul Merrywell, Chief Information Officer, MSHA. “This framework allows us to be consistent and organized while utilizing a succinct communications approach that helps reduce the uncertainty and concern that is commonly associated with major technology changes.”
Strategic Consulting by Siemens provides high level consulting professionals who will partner with customers to assess, tailor, implement, and evaluate the turnkey IT Adoption Center methodologies best suited to each customer’s environment. Deliverables include: comprehensive findings documented from assessment of implementation cycle processes, governance and project management office structure, communications and marketing, learning techniques, adoption results and measures, cultural transition of IT projects to operational ownership, and alignment of strategic outcomes to utilization of technology.
Siemens consulting professionals partner with organizations to devise methodologies best suited to that organization’s environment. The hospital or health system typically convenes an advisory panel to govern the process. Panel members are rotated on a recurring basis. Now that MSHA has cleared implementation checkpoints, the advisory panel is rotating to include new leaders from within the health system, such as Frank Lauro, DO, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at MSHA, who will lead the next phase of development which will include connecting physician practices with Siemens MobileMD HIE and patient portal, which has been branded as “OWL – Online Wellness Link.”
“The ability to exchange patient information across the alliance will create a more robust patient experience where providers can gather relevant patient data no matter where they may have interacted with MSHA,” said Dr .Lauro. “Our physicians will have much easier access to important information such as medications, history and test results and they will be able to send new data back to the health system. This creates a more holistic approach to managing our patients, regardless of the setting where they are seen.”
The outcomes achieved by the Siemens customers described herein were achieved in the customers’ unique setting. Since there is no “typical” hospital and many variables exist (e.g., hospital size, case mix, level of IT adoption), there can be no guarantee that others will achieve the same results.
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The Siemens Healthcare Sector is one of the world's largest suppliers to the healthcare industry and a trendsetter in medical imaging, laboratory diagnostics, medical information technology and hearing aids. Siemens offers its customers products and solutions for the entire range of patient care from a single source – from prevention and early detection to diagnosis, and on to treatment and aftercare. By optimizing clinical workflows for the most common diseases, Siemens also makes healthcare faster, better and more cost-effective. Siemens Healthcare employs some 52,000 employees worldwide and operates around the world. In fiscal year 2013 (to September 30), the Sector posted revenue of 13.6 billion euros and profit of 2.0 billion euros. For further information please visit: www.siemens.com/healthcare.
