Growing numbers of hospitals and healthcare systems rely on unified EHR solutions to improve care
An independent study of nearly 2000 healthcare delivery organisations found 73% of hospitals now use single-vendor EHR systems, while only 27% still use so-called “best-of-breed” EHR systems². Unified EHR and health information platforms like InterSystems IntelliCare™ simplify clinician workflows, improve patient safety and satisfaction, increase business agility and insights, and eliminate the inherent cost and complexity of best-of-breed EHR solutions.
Single EHR environments are fundamentally efficient
Best-of-breed EHR solutions are clinical applications that are tailored to meet the specific requirements of particular medical disciplines. Surgeons, obstetricians, oncologists and other specialists are often accustomed to and prefer these narrowly focused tools. But a specialized solution is not always the best solution. Multivendor EHR environments are notoriously inefficient and fraught with drawbacks.
With a fragmented, multivendor EHR environment:
- Clinicians lack full access to a patient’s health record and may overlook indications of diseases and disorders.
- Doctors lack a cohesive view of the patient journey (history, results, allergies, etc.), which can adversely affect diagnosis and treatment plans, and result in duplicate tests and unnecessary expenses for the patient.
- Clinicians need to open several screens in multiple applications, which can lead to the selection of the wrong patient and/or the display of wrong information.
- Clinicians must re-enter patient information into multiple systems, which squanders valuable time and can lead to data-entry errors and patient safety risks.
- Each clinical application has a different look and feel, and potentially a unique set of logon credentials, which further impacts clinician productivity and quality of experience, and contributes to burnout.
Unified EHR solutions improve patient satisfaction and confidence
Multivendor EHR environments also impair patient experiences and trust. Patients are often asked to provide the same information over and over again throughout their journey, which leads to frustration and scepticism. Patients are also forced to use multiple different portals to access their medical records, interact with providers, view lab results, schedule appointments, manage prescriptions, and pay bills, often encountering disparities across systems.
Single EHR environments streamline hospital operations
A best-of-breed approach also impairs workflows and visibility for healthcare administrators, hospital operations staff, and business professionals. Patient information, including social data, is maintained in multiple systems, which creates overhead, complicates analysis and reporting, and leads to coding errors, billing mistakes, claims delays, and potential compliance violations. Consumables and medicines are managed in multiple systems, opening the door for inventory overstock and unnecessary expenditures. And valuable business information is scattered across different systems making it difficult for hospital administrators to make fully informed decisions.
InterSystems IntelliCare optimizes business processes and clinical workflows, and improves decision-making
InterSystems IntelliCare connects care teams across the healthcare ecosystem, making it easy to share information across facilities, organizations, and disciplines; improving safety, compliance, and patient satisfaction. Much more than just an EHR system, the fully integrated, AI-powered solution includes a comprehensive set of unified clinical, administrative, revenue cycle management, and departmental products with a common look and feel, and a single data repository.
IntelliCare is built on proven solutions like InterSystems TrakCare® and InterSystems IRIS® for Health. A leader in healthcare interoperability, InterSystems has a long history of helping organisations improve clinical outcomes and drive revenues. IntelliCare introduces cutting-edge AI functionality to help healthcare organisations take action, increase automation, and boost patient and business outcomes. An intelligent, multilingual, personalised AI Assistant with advanced ambient listening and generative AI capabilities streamlines workflows and interactions, helping clinicians, administrators, and hospital staff save time, increase productivity, and make data-driven decisions. Providers can record patient conversations and generate encounter notes and summaries, while promoting strict human oversight and patient consent.
IntelliCare eliminates the inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and safety risks of traditional siloed multi-vendor EHR environments. The comprehensive InterSystems solution delivers all the fundamental features and functions required for individual disciplines, providing feature parity with best-of-breed clinical solutions.
IntelliCare unifies and optimises clinician workflows, and provides a holistic view of a patient’s health information, including medical history, diagnoses, treatments, medications, lab results, and other relevant data, improving visibility while reducing risk. The modular solution portfolio includes a wide array of integrated applications for ultimate flexibility and choice.
IntelliCare helps IT organizations simplify operations and reduce expenses. With an AI-powered, unified EHR and health information platform, CIOs can:
- Lower total cost of ownership by consolidating IT infrastructure, containing recurring operations expenses, and avoiding third-party AI solution cost and complexity
- Minimize ongoing product administration, support, training, maintenance, upgrade, testing, and supplier management burdens by collapsing silos and leveraging a single vendor with a single point-of-contact for all EHR functions
- Improve business agility and respond to executive directives and compliance mandates more quickly by avoiding system integration complexity
Next steps
Multivendor EHR blindspots and inefficiencies can hinder clinician productivity and impair patient care. IntelliCare can help you streamline clinical workflows, eliminate redundancies and errors, and improve patient outcomes To learn more, please visit InterSystems.com/IntelliCare
Not convinced a unified EHR solution will fully meet your clinicians’ needs? InterSystems can help you perform a feature comparison to identify any gaps and develop a plan of action.
Not ready to move to a single-vendor EHR solution? Rest assured InterSystems is a market leader in interoperability and connecting solutions, and IntelliCare can easily integrate with third-party solutions if a composable solution architecture will best meet the needs of your organization.Any AI Tool or AI Functionality provided by InterSystems is subject to regulatory and clinical safety requirements and is not made fully available to all global markets. Please consult our
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1 - High-Acuity CIS Battle Ground: Best-of-Breed vs EHR, February 2023
2 - Single-Vendor Electronic Health Record Use Is Associated With Greater Opportunities for Organizational and Clinical Care Improvements, Hanadi Y. Hamidi PhD, MHA, et al, Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality & Outcomes, Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2022