Meditech is a Best in KLAS vendor used by thousands of healthcare provider organizations worldwide across care delivery settings. The Meditech Expanse EHR uses cloud-based systems designed to drive better outcomes and provide mobile, personalized technologies to improve efficiency for an overburdened workforce.

Meditech of course is at this week's HIMSS23 Conference & Exhibition in Chicago and has plenty to highlight and share with attendees.

Google Health integration

"We are excited to showcase the evolution of our integration with Google Health to advance clinical search and discovery in the Expanse EHR," said Michelle O'Connor, president and CEO of Meditech. "We are confronting the data fragmentation burden that many clinicians face today by enabling them to quickly review the information they need in a meaningful way.

"On Tuesday and Wednesday, visitors can attend scheduled in-booth demonstrations to see how we have embedded Google Health’s search and summarization capabilities into Expanse," she continued. "Demonstrations will show how the search tool fits seamlessly into the physician workflow, retrieving data from outside of the EHR and presenting a longitudinal view of the current and past patient history."

Expanse offers a modern, cloud-based and scalable EHR platform that enables digital transformation, she added.

"This is not your father’s Meditech," she quipped. "Expanse is foundational to improving care delivery in a complex and rapidly evolving ecosystem."

How the Meditech EHR is different

O'Connor checked off a variety of ways she said Expanse stands apart, contending it:

• Makes data accessible and actionable.
• Provides the targeted insight needed to make quicker, more informed decisions at the point of care.
• Enables clinicians to navigate patient records in the same way they navigate other apps on their smartphones and tablets.
• Empowers busy executives with the advanced analytics they need to maximize revenues, improve outcomes and control costs.
• Allows patients, providers and other staff to leverage their preferred technology to get the information they need from their EHR.
• Maximizes patient convenience by using technologies like self-appointment booking, virtual care, remote monitoring and secure texting.

"Just because budgets are tight does not mean innovation needs to stall," O'Connor stated. "It is important that IT leaders optimize their EHR investments to help automate processes and reduce their clinician and administrative burdens.

"It also is important to resume quality improvement innovations sidelined during the pandemic," she continued. "Use of technologies like analytics, patient registries, advanced clinical decision support and predictive surveillance should all be expanded."

Data is foundational

Organizations must define a data and interoperability strategy, she insisted. Data is foundational in enabling technologies like AI to help mitigate critical staffing shortages and burnout, she added.

"With the right technologies in place, clinicians can focus more of their time on high-value tasks and direct patient care instead of administrative burdens," O'Connor said. "Automation also can have an impact on front- and back-end areas like revenue cycle and supply chain, which also are facing staff shortages.

"A major focus for many healthcare organizations will be shifting their EHR to the cloud as they look to address IT staffing shortages, prevent cyberattacks, and maintain a sustainable and scalable operating expense model," she continued.

Healthcare organizations should continue to embrace technologies that helped carry the industry through the COVID-19 pandemic, such as telehealth and virtual care offerings, she added.

Population health is key

"Population health solutions also will be critical in identifying those patients who have delayed preventative care or have experienced inequitable access to care due to a number of economic or social factors," O'Connor said. "Equally important is a focus on mental health.

"22.8% of adults 18 or older in the U.S. now identify as having some type of mental illness," she noted. "It is critical that healthcare leaders look to incorporate strategies to address mental health, promote health equity and manage social determinants of health."

Meditech is exhibiting at HIMSS23 in booth 2848.

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Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
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