Interoperability’s goal should not be to simply generate more data to slow down providers. A much better objective is to surface only meaningful information within providers’ workflow at the point of care. KLAS recognizes this essential piece of the population health management puzzle for its Provider Population Health IT Framework, contending that software that elicits clinician engagement must demonstrate the following basic qualities:
• Supports single sign-on integration
• Integration/ability for a care provider working in the population health tool to efficiently take action in the electronic medical record (EMR)
• Integration/presentation of care gaps to providers within the provider (EMR) workflow.
• Ability to integrate with multiple EMR platforms
• Ability to track clinician usage and activity
The first, second and third bullets about viewing information and taking action within the EMR workflow without multiple sign-ons would be major improvements for most healthcare organizations today. Too often, providers are required to jostle between multiple applications and portals to find meaningful information. If an organization is able to deliver patient-specific analytics data to providers at the point of care it is often superfluous and/or irrelevant. Nonetheless, the documentation still requires precious time to scan so providers can make that determination.
That is likely why, in its Framework criteria, KLAS recommends advanced functionality for clinician engagement to include “timely integration of population health tool data and alerts to be displayed within the EMR workflow and stored within the EMR” and “presentation of care gaps to providers within the provider workflow with the ability to act within the provider workflow.”
Contextually aware technology that enables this ability to view meaningful information and act within the EHR workflow is being used today in our health system. Although it has only been used a short time, clinicians have already stated that they would never want to return to practicing medicine without this capability.
Contextual awareness eliminates burden The platform our providers use to view meaningful clinical insights at the point of care is not creating or analyzing data; we already have several other systems that perform those functions. Rather, the software gathers predefined information from our numerous EHR systems, clinical data analytics platforms, and payer portals, and then surfaces at the point of care as soon as the provider opens a chart. These data points, for example, could include care gaps associated with one of our organization’s value-based care payment programs.
