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stories on how physicians and hospitals now must apply codes such as V95.42 (forced landing of spacecraft injuring occupant), Y08.01 (assault by hockey stick) and R46.1 (bizarre personal appearance), not to mention “contact with a squirrel, other than biting.”
For health care professionals, managing and applying thousands of new diagnosis codes (with reimbursement penalties for errors) is no laughing matter. Over the past year, McLaren Health Care has made the major investments in information technology required of a large, diverse health system for dealing with coming data demands.
In September, McLaren concluded an extensive planning and evaluation process that chose Cerner
Corporation as our systemwide
electronic medical record
platform. “This is the largest system replacement we’ve ever implemented,” says Ron Strachan, chief information o cer for McLaren. Cerner’s “Millennium” platform is an electronic health record system that includes integrated revenue
cycle management
and population health management solutions. It will replace the various McKesson and Allscripts platforms used at
our facilities (some 40 di erent programs) with a single system. Ultimately, 75 to 80 percent of all McLaren employees will be trained in using the program. The process will take time and much e ort to implement, with nal rollout set for sometime in 2017.
But the payo will be worth the investment, according to Strachan. “One outcome is better quality. We can see all information for the patient — every encounter a patient has with McLaren will reside in the system.” For example, if a patient with a drug allergy has been seeing one of our providers, and then comes into one of
our emergency rooms, the system will instantly ag the allergy information for the ER team. This interoperability extends outside of
the McLaren system — it will be far easier to share patient records
with providers regionally and nationally if needed, with less danger that vital patient data
will “fall between the cracks.”
The new systemwide platform will go beyond medical
recordkeeping. Over time, it will also include McLaren’s
administrative functions, such as nancials, scheduling,
billing, supply chain, and, ultimately, human
resources.
This comprehensive approach to IT and data
McLaren HeaLtH Care
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