ImplementHIT to roll out OptimizeHIT physician EHR elearning solutions at HIMSS11

ImplementHIT will roll out OptimizeHIT, (www.OptimizeHIT.com) physician electronic health record (EHR) elearning solutions, at HIMSS 2011 in Orlando, FL, February 20-24 in booth 3385. This new patent-pending solution will deliver bold new functionality scaled to small physician practices with 20 doctors or fewer, empowering them to achieve meaningful use of qualified EHRs. ImplementHIT is the developer of sophisticated, physician-friendly, dynamic education products and services to help hospitals and physician practices drive organization-wide adoption of EHRs.

“Doctors can participate from home, at their leisure. For the providers, that's one of the absolute best benefits”

This solution designed specifically for smaller practices builds on ImplementHIT's unsurpassed qualifications in physician online learning. ImplementHIT has helped hospitals including St.Vincent Health, North-Shore Long Island Health System (the largest EHR implementation in New York), Columbia University, and many more, drive clinical adoption of their EHRs through customized strategies including training.

The training technology of OptimizeHIT drives adoption of even advanced EHR functionality, while preventing lost productivity during implementation and beyond. It's based on ImplementHIT's successful training platform used with hospitals and larger organizations, but priced especially for smaller physician practices. With high level guidance from ImplementHIT's EHR training experts, practices can leverage in-house resources to fully customize training content to their actual practice scenarios. This more meaningful training approach is necessary for effective physician participation and engagement. Based on low levels of industry-wide adoption, this has been a challenge for EHR vendors.

OptimizeHIT is powered by ImplementHIT's patent‐pending Advanced Training Portal, which connects providers, support personnel and management in real time, and delivers objective data to evaluate the success of the implementation. Because small physician practices experience significant demands with their EHRs, their physician proficiency levels often plateau at the basic or intermediate level. To achieve meaningful use and receive federal HITECH funding, providers using certified EHRs will have to become proficient with the advanced features of the EHR that even large organizations with entire training departments struggle to achieve. OptimizeHIT was designed to help smaller practices with the fundamentals, as well as to drive clinical adoption of EHRs into advanced functionality.

Because OptimizeHIT is web-based, physicians and clinical staff access the elearning at a time and location most convenient for them. "Doctors can participate from home, at their leisure. For the providers, that's one of the absolute best benefits," said Jim Garrity, chief information officer, Tucson Orthopaedic Institute (TOI). "They are seeing value in the education. Coupled with the cost effectiveness of the online learning, this is putting TOI on track to save hundreds of hours of training time for providers alone," he said. TOI uses ImplementHIT's fully customized training solution, which is also available to larger physician practices and hospitals.

"The technology used in OptimizeHIT is based on years of research on educating physicians to train more effectively online. Through our vast experience with larger organizations, our software not only drives EMR adoption, it protects physician productivity. Smaller practices have a smaller cushion for lost productivity during implementation, making OptimizeHIT a vital tool," said Dr. Andres Jimenez, CEO, ImplementHIT.

"The biggest impediment to meaningful use is meaningful education. We see evidence of that in the very small percentage of hospitals and practices using the advanced features of their EMR, like computerized physician order entry (CPOE) with problem based order sets, electronic charge submission and prescription transmission. These features are critical because they enhance workflows, and lead to the significant healthcare quality benefits promised by EMR vendors," said Jimenez. Dr. Jimenez is a former clinical director of content and online training for Allscripts. ImplementHIT is led by physicians and experts in clinical and medical informatics and with Ph.D.-level proficiency in online learning.

A leading-edge solution designed to fit with practices' workflows, OptimizeHIT is fully compatible with iPads®.

Also at HIMSS, ImplementHIT will showcase their Advanced Training Portal for hospitals and large physician practices. This Portal allows these organizations' in-house experts to customize training to their EHRs, but on a different scale than OptimizeHIT. Both solutions are compatible with all EHRs, including Epic, Allscripts, eClinicalWorks® and others. Licensing is based on practice size.

In a featured eSession at HIMSS, Dr. Jimenez will present with Margaret Cornwell, Allscripts Implementation Manager at St.Vincent Health on "Hybrid EHR Training: Maximize Adoption & Physician Productivity."