Personalized assistance helps clinics on the forefront of HIT use

Qualis Health’s one-on-one, onsite approach to helping primary care practices better understand and use their electronic health record (EHR) systems is paying off. “Bottom line, if Helen [Stroebel, Qualis Health Quality Improvement Principal] hadn’t helped, we’d still be churning out inaccurate reports,” said Casey Crotty, the clinic administrator at Family Health Center in Sandpoint, Idaho.

As part of its work as the QIO in Idaho and Washington, Qualis Health is working with primary care practices to improve cancer screening and immunization rates. Using an EHR to identify and monitor the population of patients who have received preventive care services—or are overdue for them—is a key component of the project, and one that pushes the participating practices into the forefront of the health information technology (HIT) arena.

“We are really guiding our participants to the leading edge of this work,” Stroebel said. “There aren’t many others ahead of us to learn from. We are making discoveries each time we program a new query or implement a new workflow.”

Like any computerized system, EHRs have a logic all their own, which doesn’t always mesh with the way medical personnel have traditionally documented and accessed patient data. “If you’re not really, really specific as to what you’re looking for, and what field the data is pulled from, you won’t get accurate reports,” said Crotty. “I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to really dig in there, so Helen’s visit was a good opportunity to learn more...It was great to have her there to look over our shoulders as we worked with the data.”

Reviewing patient data from a population-based perspective can yield trends and opportunities that might not be apparent when clinicians’ focus is limited to individual charts. Instead of looking at Mr. Smith’s record during an office visit and determining whether he’s among the high-risk group that should receive a flu shot, the EHR reports can identify all the patients in a practice who belong to that high-risk group, and how many of them are due to be vaccinated. Qualis Health is not only helping the participating practices create accurate reports, but also designing interventions to act upon the findings and monitor success over time. Ensuring that patients receive the recommended preventive screenings, at regular intervals, makes all the data analysis worthwhile.

“Pulling population-based data from an EHR isn’t a simple 1-2-3 process,” Stroebel explained. “We really have to problem-solve with each practice. The various EHR software packages have different interfaces and functionality for entering and retrieving data, and the all the clinics have different processes for using them. This isn’t an area where you can develop a single guideline and expect it to work. Being onsite takes an extra effort, but that time is well spent.”

Crotty agrees that having Qualis Health go the extra mile to provide one-on-one assistance has been helpful. “If other clinics have any doubt about the data they’re pulling, they really should take advantage of this help. [From the EHR reports], we’re laying the groundwork for better care, better measures, better everything,” Crotty said.