Photo By Savannah Blackstock | The following article is a first-person account by Dr. Robert Marshall, program...... read more read more
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The Military Health System is rolling out MHS GENESIS, its new electronic health record, worldwide and the better providers and patients know how to use it, the better patient outcomes are going to be. Ensuring proper training of both providers and patients is therefore essential for the successful integration and sustainment of MHS GENESIS into MHS care. To best prepare users to get the most out of MHS GENESIS, that training needs to include two key elements: peer training by local and regional experts in the new EHR and leveraging data and insights obtained through clinical informatics.
Augmenting peer training with clinical informatics maximizes providers’ ability to learn best practices for using MHS GENESIS and pass them on to patients. Armed with such knowledge, both groups can more effectively increase readiness, improve access, improve care, and lower costs. The goal is to help providers spend more quality time with patients and improve transition to care throughout the MHS.
It is critically important to teach patients and caregivers how to take care of themselves because we have them in front of us less than 1% of the time. The other 99+% of the time, they are with their families and out in the community, so we must do all we can to get them to engage in healthy lifestyles. The best way to do that is with evidence-based education in which peer experts teach providers, providers teach patients, and patients use what they’ve learned to keep themselves healthier.
Peer Training
Research shows that adult learners – including MHS providers – get the best retention and outcomes from scenario-based and workflow-based training in one-to-one or small group settings. The best people to know the scenarios and workflows providers encounter in their specific roles are peers in the same roles – physicians for physicians, nurses for nurses, and so on. Experts in a particular aspect of MHS GENESIS can teach peers to consistently apply best practices for the EHR in their respective roles.
Peer training provides a great opportunity to optimize documentation and incorporate embedded clinical decision support resources at the point of care. Peer experts can share best practice templates, auto text, order sets, and similar tools across the enterprise and encourage user buy-in and adoption. Walking providers through these resources teaches the proper decision-making process for diagnosis as well as treatment, improving care for patients.
Clinical Informatics
Teaching providers how to use MHS GENESIS is but one part of helping the platform succeed. Another essential element is clinical informatics, which helps in teaching providers how to collect, analyze, and use EHR data to support best practices and improve efficiency and outcomes. It's critically important to ensure data integrity is as high as possible. If you have bad data, you make bad decisions, and none of us wants that.
Using better data to drive decisions is a big part of improving clinical workflow, an area of significant interest and expertise for clinical informaticists and something important to train providers to do. It includes educating people on how to evaluate their current EHR workflow and training them how to eliminate waste and potentially dangerous actions. The key is to teach optimal standardized workflow across the enterprise, which standardizes care – improving outcomes and reducing unintended and unwanted variation that can make care not evidence based.
Benefits
Peer experts schooled in clinical informatics can be a huge asset to their organizations by helping new and struggling users learn MHS GENESIS to provide better, more cost-effective care. Research shows that groups with formal clinical informatics training are more successful than those without it.
For providers, better training leads to better teamwork. Improved efficiency leads to more readable notes and improved care with less effort. Improved efficiency also increases job satisfaction, reduces burnout, and improves retention.
For patients, improved efficiency equals more face-to-face time with providers. Standardized documentation improves the quality of data in the EHR, which leads to more informed and effective care and better outcomes.
Biting the Bullet
Peer training backed by clinical informatics is a force multiplier to help providers in any setting deliver care more efficiently. MHS organizations need to “bite the bullet” and ensure peer experts have time and resources as part of their official job responsibilities to learn best practices, learn how to teach others, and actually teach them so everyone will use the system better. If all that is a collateral duty, if peer experts have to do it on their own time, it’s not going to happen.
Proper training on equipment required for a mission is essential for success in any environment, operational or garrison. MHS GENESIS is now required equipment for military providers in their mission to ensure military readiness – the MHS has the responsibility to ensure they can use it so patients get the care they deserve.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
| Date Taken: | 06.08.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 06.08.2022 13:45 |
| Story ID: | 422505 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 462 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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