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TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PHYSICIANS TURN TO EHR PRE-LOAD SERVICES TO OPTIMIZE IMPLEMENTATION BY MARK HAGLAND
Temple University Physicians, a 400-physician (salaried) academic faculty practice plan, whose members are faculty members of the Temple University School of Medicine and affiliated with the Temple University Health System (TUHS), a four-hospital system in Philadelphia, has been moving forward on a number of fronts when it comes to electronic medical record/electronic health record (EMR/EHR) implementation.
One of the areas in which Frank Erdlen, vice dean of information technology for Temple University School of Medicine and CIO of Temple University Physicians, felt the need for assistance, was in the area known as EMR pre-load services. He and his colleagues have been working with the Green Bay, Wis.-based IOD Incorporated to implement their services in the organization, in order to optimize EHR/ EMR implementation.
Erdlen spoke recently with HCI Editor-inChief Mark Hagland regarding the need for pre-load services and what he and his colleagues at Temple have been doing recently. Below are excerpts from that interview.
IMPLEMENTATION ON A LARGE SCALE
Healthcare Informatics: What are EMR pre-load services?
Frank Erdlen: Temple University is the organization that Temple University Physicians, the faculty practice plan, lives in. Most of the physicians are clinical faculty members with significant teaching responsibilities.
We've been implementing the Epicare System from Epic [the Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems Incorporated]. TUH and Episcopal Hospitals don't have an EHR, but are beginning to implement Epic; and Jeanes Hospital and Fox Chase Hospital use Soarian [ from the Malven, Pa.-based Siemens Healthcare]. We've been live since January 2012. So we brought up 100 practices in about 13 months.
HCI: Tell us about the need for pre-loading in situations like this.
Erdlen: We brought up over 100 practices in 12 to 13 months; and we have a staff of 38 people. This is an important consideration from a CIO perspective, since we had been using paper medical records. We needed a way to be able to pull forward the key clinical information for established patients, and populate the EMR with clinical information; and that's what IOD helped us do. So the high-level description, and we can drill down on any piece of this, is that we worked with our physicians and had...