Breaking the Chains of Legacy: Embracing Agile Solutions for EHRs
Transformation, modernization, and maintaining a competitive edge require the ability to formulate a rapid, accurate response. Time is more than money – lost time means lost opportunities.
Healthcare leaders must look to be nimble, with agile solutions that perform in today’s high stakes surgical environment. Are Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems positioning your healthcare system for the future, or freezing it in the past?
When to Change Tactics - Healthcare’s Legacy Dilemma
Throughout history, the ability to adapt and respond quickly and accurately has been a hallmark of effective military strategy. But when times change, so must tools and systems if leaders are to remain a step ahead.
Healthcare systems have a long history with EHRs as their primary systems of record. Though they work well for data storage, they often lack the responsiveness and flexibility required for today's dynamic healthcare environment. Rather than facilitating flowing fresh data where and when it is needed, unscalable systems can cause bottlenecks that can hinder clinical workflows, delay decision-making, and contribute to clinician burnout.
A quarter-century into the new millennium, might has a new, sleek identity: old methods are left behind by innovative technologies and those who employ them with precision. When managers and providers need actionable data, an inefficient older system just can’t keep up.
Shining a Spotlight on Surgical and Procedure Suites
How can you transform the most critical and financially impactful areas under your leadership? It starts with adopting agile workflows for the hospital’s core areas - perioperative and procedure suites.
These environments are not only responsible for the majority of margin and revenue generation, but they also demand the highest levels of operational investment – from specialized labor to high-tech surgical tools and integrated solutions that allow for a timely, effective response when challenges arise.
The stakes are high and so is the potential. In and around the OR, inefficiencies can cost the most. Accordingly, real-time, purpose-built solutions can yield the most dramatic improvements.
Embracing Systems of Engagement
To fill the gaps left by legacy EHRs, healthcare organizations are turning to Systems of Engagement: agile, user-centric platforms that complement and integrate with existing EHRs.
Systems of Engagement augment existing processes, and can transform the use of rapidly changing hospital environments. These solutions enhance communication, streamline workflows, and provide real-time insights without the need for overhauling existing infrastructure.
Stale data from legacy systems is a reflection, not a revelation. You need the opportunity to react, or it’s just numbers. A system of engagement gives that opportunity to leadership and team members, creating a nimble environment where change is another tool for growth.
Agile Solutions in Action
A respected hospital with 10,000 surgeries per year was struggling to reach the first case on-time starts (FCOTS) daily goal of 90% set by OR leaders. The cause? Difficult to determine and therefore, impossible to address.
The hospital’s EHR did not easily provide additional data collection, and required manual work from the charge nurse. However, the hospital had just implemented LiveData’s tracking tools, which started automatically capturing the relevant data.
Ultimately this let the hospital add previously unavailable, real-time indicators on their digital tracking boards. Clinicians and leadership could see fresh data on daily operations and were able to use data-driven monitoring to increase FCOTS from 83% to 95% – exceeding the team’s goal.
Even when EHRs do gesture towards addressing specific problems - Oracle, for example, has promised to scrap their current platform and come out with a voice-driven AI - the history of technology tells us that the workflows you prefer won’t be ready, even in the unlikely event that the initial rollout is on time.
You could wait a long time for something promised in the future, or you could act now for proven outcomes.
Lessons for Hospital Leaders
Healthcare must follow the military’s example of modernizing and adapting as technology advances by breaking free from the constraints of legacy systems. Doing so ensures their organizations are prepared to face current challenges and future uncertainties — starting with the OR.
Innovative hospitals should call on a purpose-built system of engagement like LiveData to serve as a high-impact catalyst for operational transformation, margin protection, and workforce enablement.