Guest Columnist
HelpSTAR Eases Transition to EMR for Rochester General Hospital
By
Mar 2, 2012 - 7:24:05 PM

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - In response to rising healthcare costs and a universal desire for higher patient safety standards, the Obama administration announced an ambitious five-year plan in 2010 that would move healthcare providers to electronic medical records (EMR) by 2015. The federal government offered funding to hospitals and other health systems to help offset the exorbitant costs of the conversion. However, healthcare providers were also cautioned that failure to complete the transition by 2015 would result in cuts to their Medicare reimbursement levels, which could result in catastrophic financial losses for both doctors and hospitals.

With the clock now ticking, IT experts and medical professionals are scrambling to find ways to keep on schedule and continue to collect federal incentives. Prudent healthcare IT leaders understand that proactive planning is essential to ensure a seamless, cost-effective transition that maintains customer satisfaction and efficiency. To successfully meet the 2015 deadline, hospitals must take action now.

One such fast actor is Paul Moriarty, manager of IT Support Services at Rochester General Hospital (RGH). Along with his IT team, Moriarty was supporting 7,500 employees at the time of the administration’s announcement. They faced a daunting challenge: RGH ranks first in New York for overall medical care and is the fourth largest cardiac center in the state. RGH is recognized as one of the nation’s 100 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals. The scale of the conversion would be enormous, and maintaining the hospital’s reputation throughout the conversion would be paramount.
Moriarty’s team was already utilizing HelpSTAR, a help desk solution, to support hospital employee’s issues with portals, emails and phone calls. Prior to the EMR transition, Moriarty’s team was handling 5,000 IT service tickets per month with HelpSTAR. Moriarty knew that his team would need to be prepared for a huge influx of additional help requests when the transition began. Moriarty had to move quickly to ensure constant levels of service and satisfaction throughout the EMR move.

To stay on top of the impending deadline, Moriarty decided to evaluate and streamline his existing help desk processes. Keeping one step ahead would help him manage the inevitable spike in incoming tickets when the new EMR system was finally instated.
Moriarty turned to HelpSTAR to help identify and leverage new features he knew would be necessary for the transition, such as self-help tools, intelligent queuing and prompts (including alarms, follow-up reminders and automatic priority escalation). HelpSTAR also provided Moriarty’s team with invaluable features like built-in rapid problem resolution and extensive reporting capabilities. Moriarty created and implemented specific ticket rules that instantly directed requests to available team members, delivering a quicker and more seamless workflow. With a bit of foresight and preemptive planning, Moriarty helped the IT help desk reach the levels of efficiency and customer satisfaction required to facilitate a smooth transition to EMR.

To learn more about Rochester General Hospital (RGH), visit the http://www.rochestergeneral.org/rochester-general-hospital/
To see if HelpSTAR can help you, visit http://www.helpstar.com/

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