The consulting firm ImplementHIT, which helps hospitals and physician practices drive adoption of electronic health records, has launched a customized online learning solution for Allscripts Enterprise EHR for the 140 physicians and clinical staff users at Tucson Orthopaedic Institute (TOI), one of the Southwest’s largest orthopaedic medical practices.
ImplementHIT is led by physicians and experts in clinical and medical informatics and with PhD-level proficiency in e-learning. Its patent-pending training technology facilitates customization, providing the benefit of enhanced quality with decreased costs.
Unlike many e-learning solutions, ImplementHIT’s extensive customization helps make training more relevant to learners. Clinical scenarios used to train the orthopaedic surgeons at TOI are based on actual scenarios from their practice. This has helped boost participation and engagement, and makes training more meaningful and applicable.
Computer-based training (CBT) has already begun to generate substantial cost savings and benefits for TOI. Rather than attending a series of live courses, physicians and clinical staff access the e-learning tools at a time and location most convenient for them.
“Doctors can participate from home, at their leisure," said Jim Garrity, chief information officer, TOI. "For the providers, that’s one of the absolute best benefits. They are seeing value in the education. Coupled with the cost effectiveness of the online learning, this is putting TOI on track to save hundreds of hours of training time for providers alone."
Medical assistants who had been overwhelmed with training responsibilities are providing very positive feedback and can now easily go back and repeat modules as needed. The streamlined e-learning is also reducing medical assistant overtime requirements and costs for TOI. Additionally, the practice is using the program to reduce training time requirements for new hires and presentation time requirements for trainers and super-users.
With deep Allscripts EHR and v11 Note experience, ImplementHIT was able to play a critical role in supporting TOI’s workflow. “They combined their knowledge of CBTs with our workflows and screens to provide expertise and tips that even those of us familiar with the EHR wouldn’t have fully understood,” said Susan Libby, applications trainer for TOI. “Their work with us was tremendous. I can’t say enough. It’s been a fantastic experience."
She added that "across the industry, the biggest weakness in EHR implementation is lack of education. Vendors focus on a few screen shots, but don’t consider the need for educating users, which is critical to success. What ImplementHIT delivered is a solution fully customized to TOI’s workflows and specialties, based on a far superior methodology that is enabling us to work around a concept of education."
The education factor has proven beneficial for TOI. Super-users have gone through the training at least twice, each time reporting learning something new.
“Meaningful use of the EHR is only possible through meaningful training that is fully customized,” said Andres Jimenez, MD, CEO of ImplementHIT. Jimenez is a former clinical director of content and online training for Allscripts.
“TOI is committed to fully leveraging the Allscripts EHR, and they recognize that cannot happen without training that is relevant and actionable to each user," he added. "They have been a tremendous partner and are making very wise decisions to maximize the return on investment of their electronic medical records system."
TOI’s 140 users consist of approximately 40 providers, 80 medical assistants and 20 physical therapy providers.
ImplementHIT’s team includes expertise in Allscripts EHR, professional voiceovers, flash, and learning management systems programming. ImplementHIT also offers training and content development for other certified EHRs.
