MBC Systems
March, 2007

Envisioning the Medical Office Through Technology and Workflow

“We need to reduce costs and medical errors with better information technology.” This was a portion of the salvo offered by President George W. Bush in his 2007 State of the Union Address. The statement represents one of several statements that have been made by Bush on the need for the healthcare industry to maximize current technologies. Unfortunately, much like Major League Baseball’s steroid issues, incorporating information technology into the medical office will require far more than presidential edicts. Problems seem to lie at every turn; from the tools themselves, to the very objectives and methodology used to implement information technology solutions.

What’s in a name… EMR, EHR, practice management, medical, financial, health data… obviously we have a naming problem. The taxonomy of healthcare information technology solutions is not precise. Marketers and salesmen and software companies at large often obscure definition and categorization by broadly using terms like electronic health records, electronic medical records, and practice management—at times interchangeably. The point is simply that we know what a word processing program does, what a spreadsheet program is, and what an e-mail client software does; but what exactly does practice management software do?

This has allowed software companies to offer a convoluted array of products and services that often compartmentalize software into costly modules, as well as create service models that entrench software companies in the management and operations of medical practices. All of this equates to greater costs and nearly inexorable business relationships with software vendors. Ultimately, sales representatives and programmers can do very little to help the management and operations of a medical practice.

Technology it seems does not always equate to cost reductions. “We’ve spent over a hundred thousand on our electronic medical records software, and it has produced little results,” says Dr. Paul Coluzzi, managing partner of The Breast Care Center of Orange County. Without the appropriate project resources in place, technology ceases to be a tool for ROI and instead can become a gaping cost center.

A project-oriented mindset is a good way to approach the integration of information systems. There must be a champion or leader in your office or service company that will see the project from design through implementation, and become the central resource and coordinate a project team. This individual must not think of this process in terms of bid, acquire, and install. Rather, he/she should locate technologies that can allow them to “re-conceptualize” their office in a digital form.

“It’s not plug and play. Implementing new information technology is really about an archetypal shift in the way users work. It’s not about doing things the way we do them now. It’s about having technology augment process to do more or better things… to further improve processes or create altogether better process in digital/electronic form,” states David Conrad, President/CEO of MBC Systems. Conrad moved his company into a digital environment with his investment in a digital imaging system. This enabled MBC Systems to implement a digital billing and collection workflow. As a result, MBC Systems won the 2004 Run Smarter Award in healthcare for its application of this information technology.

Process management may be the biggest obstacle to successful technological integration. Technology should be used to focus on processes. Just as a word processor improves on the process of handwriting adocument, or a spreadsheet program improves on the process of doing manual calculations, healthcare professionals should work with technology that improves or revolutionizes their current processes for working with records, A/R and scheduling.

The project team assembled must look at the office workflow as a set of processes. Information technology should not be applied as a monolithic solution. Each aspect—whether it involves the front office, patient care, or back office—should be detailed and examined. They should be evaluated and assessed to determine how information technology can be positively applied to make a better or new process. This will result in a more comprehensive and focused impact of technology. Working on process improvement will create better workflows and lead to a clear return on investment.

Inevitability, the project will revolutionize your office. Information technology will be so seamless and interoperable with your daily process that the technology used will almost cease to operate as discrete tools and function more like virtual workspaces. Consequently, before politicians, software companies, and healthcare professionals think about how information technology can be a means of reducing costs and errors, perhaps they should first ask, “What does the digital medical office look like?”

For more information, please contact David S. Conrad, President/CEO, MBC Systems, Inc. & MBC Financial Services, at 800-333-5240.