When selecting a new EHR, platform cost savings were a significant consideration for our organization, but we never expected the savings that we now see monthly.
Located in Hondo Texas, Medina Healthcare System comprises a 25-bed critical access hospital, three rural health clinics, and four specialty provider clinics. In late 2022, we opted to go with a new EHR platform. Having identified the shortcomings of our system from our former vendor, we were committed to ensuring our new selection addressed our specific requirements.
We needed a solution to better support our ambulatory clinicians, reduce spending, and improve patient and provider satisfaction. The MEDITECH as a Service (MaaS) cloud-based subscription model we ultimately chose provided us with not only a full-service Expanse EHR, but a solution that is scalable and could be tailored to meet our needs.
MEDITECH has lived up to its promise in numerous ways. For example, providers at our organization previously documented using a third party dictation service. Unlike before, our end users were excited to use MEDITECH Expanse’s built-in speech recognition solution.
The cost savings were immediate. Overall, we have been able to reduce contract services costs by eliminating the prior dictation service. The quality of our providers’ documentation has improved and what once was a monthly cost of $10,000 is now as low as $7 a month.
While the cost savings have been impactful, a solid ambulatory product was the focus of our EHR search. We offer numerous ambulatory services at our clinics including lab, radiology, physical therapy, and more. I often joke that rather than being a hospital with clinics attached, we’re ambulatory clinics with a hospital attached. Because of this, our real driver for selecting MEDITECH was a solid ambulatory product.
Our ambulatory clinics at Medina Healthcare System provide 60,000+ appointments a year – with some providers maintaining a high daily volume of patient visits. Before MEDITECH, providers might spend extra hours in the clinic completing documentation after a full day of treating patients. Now with Expanse, the platform gives providers the ability to offer additional patient visits each day within the scheduling tool.
MEDITECH Expanse allows providers to see a high volume of patients daily, and still complete all their documentation and administrative tasks when the end of the workday comes. They can leave the clinic without homework to complete after hours; their notes are signed, and they’re truly done for the day when they walk out the door.
The customizable templates and standard content available in Expanse Ambulatory have been game-changers for our providers. This has helped the organization in two key areas — starting new services and onboarding new providers.
This past year, we quickly onboarded all our providers, both contract and employed. As we reinstated Medicare Annual Wellness Visits, our providers worked collaboratively to build the most efficient shared “typical” template. This “typical” could be used to demonstrate the system’s efficiency to the new providers and allow them to quickly document a thorough patient encounter. Providers can leverage templates from existing providers when applicable, allowing them to rapidly build their template menus and familiarize themselves with internal processes.
Nurse satisfaction has increased as well with the Expanse Point of Care solution. This solution provides the mobility nurses need to complete bedside scanning and medication verification at the patient’s bedside. We deployed a demo device for about a month, and the nurse’s feedback was remarkable. They were so satisfied with the product that once the demo period ended, they didn’t want to return to the previous process while waiting for the new devices to come in. This was one of the first projects to go live with the Expanse implementation, and the solution has proved to be intuitive throughout the onboarding process and beyond.
Also benefiting patient satisfaction, we have implemented the MEDITECH app Patient Connect. Now patients can skip a call to the clinic if they prefer, and instead use Patient Connect to engage with providers, respond to messages, and check for test results. On the provider side, staff have been able to streamline communication with patients and can now take advantage of the time saved to give more of their time to direct patient care.
As you can see, the wins that we experienced at Medina Healthcare System have spanned the entirety of the organization, from improving workflows, reducing spending and enhancing patient and staff satisfaction. We look forward to witnessing the continued success and transformational power of our Expanse EHR.
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