Healthcare informatics has tremendous power to transform care delivery and response in a crisis, from sophisticated data analyses that pinpoint populations most at risk, to technological support for outbreak management.Considering how to use advancements in healthcare information systems and science to drive healthcare transformation is critical. That means making real people-focused connections at the point where interoperability, clinical intelligence, and electronic health record (EHR) utilization meet to advance patient care and outcomes.

Advancements in care through EHR technology are a primary goal of healthcare transformation.

A fundamental goal of healthcare transformation is to enhance patient and provider experience by allowing a flexible bidirectional healthcare exchange. Success lies in an organization’s ability to create health interactions that place patients and providers top of mind. To understand these needs, organizations must invest in transformation that prioritizes patient and provider satisfaction while acquiring data, interactions, and analytics to deliver actionable insights.

The gold standard of technology implementation is Stage 7 of Healthcare Information and Management Systems and Society’s (HIMSS) Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM). At this stage, hospitals no longer use paper charts to deliver and manage care. Instead, all stakeholders in care have electronic access to clinical information. Data warehousing analyzes patterns in clinical data to continuously improve care quality, efficiency, and patient safety, and rates of adoption for physician documentation and computerized practitioner order entry total 90% or higher.But today, fewer than 7% of healthcare organizations have reached Stage 7 EMRAM Maturity Status.

It’s an especially challenging task for public agencies, which have been slower to undertake EHR modernization. However, the benefits of data-driven advancements in care are clear: organizations that achieve Stage 7 Status report higher levels of physician satisfaction, deeper adoption of EHR personalization functionality, and better teamwork between clinicians and health IT teams, according to a survey by KLAS and HIMSS Analytics¹.

To reach this state, healthcare organizations must connect people, processes, and technology.

In working with hundreds of commercial healthcare clients and numerous EHR systems, including Allscripts, athenahealth, Epic, Meditech, McKesson, and Cerner, Guidehouse has found that these three elements are critical to the success of any healthcare informatics initiative, regardless of size or type.

But aligning people, processes, and technology toward a unified outcome requires a deep understanding of the critical stakeholders involved in an initiative, the processes they will use, and the technology they will leverage to advance health outcomes. The single most crucial denominator is clinical integration².Clinical transformation and related change management support should reside outside the technology vendor. The technology vendor’s core competency is configuring and deploying a technology that meets the functional (end-user) requirements, technical/security requirements, and functions as intended. While technology is essential to the modernization effort, true and lasting transformation will not occur without thorough clinical integration of the new system
supported by a robust human-centered design based on the people, process, and technology connection.

Ultimately, a healthcare organization’s success in connecting these elements will be key to its ability to achieve healthcare transformation.