3 8 S U P P L E M E N T T O O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E A P R I L 2 0 1 7
record and pulling papers from a file drawer, all of which can delay the billing
process. "Our system makes forgetting a field nearly impossible," says LoAnn
Vande Leest, RN, MBA-H, CNOR, CASC, the CEO at Northwest Michigan
Surgery Center in Traverse City, Mich. "There's a lot of potential with this tech-
While some physicians
applaud improvements to
digital record keeping pro-
grams, others say recent
changes are mostly cosmetic.
"To some degree it's like lip-
stick on a pig," says David
Hanauer, MD, assistant direc-
tor for clinical informatics at the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer
Center's Informatics Core in Ann Arbor.
One of the most frequent complaints about EMR technology is the lack of interop-
erability, meaning different systems can't communicate with one another. The good
news: Innovative solutions may be on the horizon. A large project called Fast
Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), engineered by a coalition of worldwide
developers, seeks to create an open standard for exchanging healthcare information
electronically.
"Some vendors cannot keep up with the changes clinicians want," says Dr. Hanauer.
"But if they opened up their products more, we could innovate around them. For exam-
ple, if I wanted to view patient data in a new type of chart, I could wait for a vendor to
develop one or, if the vendor permitted, industry could build a charting app that taps into
the EMR's data. I think we'll see more of this openness and more of these applications in
health care over the next 5 years." — Diane Stopyra
FUTURE FORECAST
Efforts Underway to Solve
The Interoperability Issue
• ONLINE CHAT The ability to share patient data among different EMR platforms
would bring the technology to the next level.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN
