Posted by MEDITECH Connect on September 10, 2012 at 11:00pm: We recently sat down with the Paul Evans, CEO of PowerHealth OnDemand, to talk about performance management data, Obamacare and how it all relates to your MEDITECH hospital…

Q: So Paul, tell us a little bit about your background with MEDITECH, how many MEDITECH hospitals you currently serve and why you decided to start PowerHealth OnDemand?
Our relationship with MEDITECH naturally evolved. While we don’t have any staff that have ever been on with MEDITECH, we have formed a deep understanding of how the HIS works within the hospital community. PowerHealth OnDemand serves 600 hospital sites globally and 40+ sites in North America are MEDITECH users.
Our experience with MEDITECH clients is they are proven to be rich in data, but “information poor” in being able to retrieve and logically organize information into simple intuitive solution-based views. Additionally, it became apparent as we worked with more and more MEDITECH sites that hospital staff had a fundamental need to gain access to all the robust data from not only MEDITECH but from all the other systems hospitals implemented over the course of time. That’s what we do

Q: How does PowerHealth OnDemand help clients through the future of Healthcare Reform now that the legislation has passed?
Running a hospital certainly won’t get any easier due to the increased management pressures caused by the new age of Healthcare Reform. Trusted access to performance-based details is key to the success. Cost management is critical and is at the core of survival of all hospitals. In addition, some of our sites have adopted or are moving to an ACO model whereby they must have an integrated solution to both their MEDITECH HIS and 3rd party data sources such as physician and claims data. Administration will need to have consistent visibility into the care continuum for patient populations and managing the financial side related to “Bundled Payments”. Access to trusted data and information to make educated decisions for both strategic and operational is paramount in this model.
Our PowerHealth OnDemand clients are preparing themselves for the storm ahead. They have routine access to detailed costs down to the patient and physician level – from one single system source. The OnDemand Business Performance engine enables MEDITECH sites with a much easier and flexible way to deploy and manage cost accounting, as a service, in order to produce the trusted and accurate results. Our solutions directly support strategic areas for finance and business management. Intervention leading to best practices happens when visibility into strategy is combined with clinical operations such as managing patient throughput, profitability, and labor & materials in major areas such as the OR, ED, Radiology, and other key departments. Quality intervention happens with visibility into performance at the patient and physician level to better our system of patient care. Benchmarking against peers also enables for better management decisions. This is complex stuff, but our clients are grateful that they found PowerHealth to satisfy their performance management needs.

Q: To put it bluntly, why should a MEDITECH hospital care about what you guys do? What problems do your products solve that are not as easy to tackle with the base EHR package?
MEDITECH hospitals are interested in PowerHealth OnDemand for 2 major reasons:
1) Because hospitals committed to surviving and thriving require trusted performance data and information in order to run their business and operations while providing visibility into their quality of care. We provide the quantifiable insights into what service lines and physicians make or lose a hospital profits and, importantly, why that is.
2) Because integrating over 34+ disparate MEDITECH modules and combining them with 3rd party data sources to provide logical insight to executives, department management, and analysts is typically not a core competency within healthcare organizations. PowerHealth OnDemand aggregates all these disparate, but highly valuable, data sources, provides real time access to customized view-points with an implementation time frame within 45 days.
At PowerHealth, we are not an EHR vendor. We are a systems integrator at our core that happens to have a proprietary performance management platform to enable users with access to logical and actionable insight to their performance management needs.

Q: You mentioned reporting in 6.0 which has been a common struggle among members who are upgrading. Can you talk in a little more detail on how you’ve helped hospitals transition all of their reports to their new 6.0 release?
We learn quite a bit from our clients – everyday. One of our clients that recently went through the MEDITECH 6.o upgrade stated that “OnDemand makes upgrades seamless or “Future-proof” to their HIS (both MEDITECH and Non-MEDITECH sites).
This means that our clients can rely on the PowerHealth OnDemand Platform because we securely house all the data integration and reporting logic. Proof to this became apparent when one of our key clients was in dire need of reestablishing access to critical data reporting that drives their operations starting with ED, OR, and Radiology.
The client had over 6,000 NPR’s that provided static, but valuable outputs. We were able to establish connection to each MEDITECH 6.0 module and integrate the data to produce our standard Ready-Access to dynamic analytics and self-service reporting environment for all the departments and physicians. This only took a matter of a couple days due to the fact that we had already established HIS module access from their Finance Team already using our Cost Accounting Module.

Q: We spend so much time talking about 6.0 these days that sometimes we forget how many Magic and Client Server hospitals that are still out there. For those that are not looking to change their systems in the near future, how have you been able to enhance MEDITECH hospital systems on older releases?
Regardless of MEDITECH version, PowerHealth OnDemand provides the same seamless access to all the data captured at the HIS level. We simply enhance MEDITECH (any version) by providing the single source system and logic for actually utilizing all the information in meaningful business decision-making aspects. Without a solution like PowerHealth OnDemand the data is just that, data, and not useful information provided in real time…

Q: So it sounds like you’ve got a variety of different users who utilize your products from the business office to the ER..
PowerHealth OnDemand promotes users at all Service Lines, Executive Level sand Decision Maker Levels. Usually, Finance and Quality are the first to adopt it, but usage quickly spreads to all departments. Our economic model is one where pricing is based on total number of Hospital Beds vs. Users so it makes it easier to get Hospitals to share the solutions tool with all of their applicable staff. We have found that this methodology is the only way our clients are going to get process improvement changes to be adopted. Peer benchmarking by physicians coupled with publicizing it is a great way to get change for the better.

Q: So here’s the million dollar question: How well does your product integrate with MEDITECH. Is data consistently updated accurately and consistently?
Our Cloud-based system integrates seamlessly with MEDITECH source systems, DR’s and combines the data with other source systems to provide users with an enterprise view of their data in an organized manner. We do this in a very tried and tested, and proprietary, method. We are then enabling best practices in their operational and strategic decisions through our benchmarking processes.
Are there checks in place to ensure that everything ties out to the host system?
We have a patent-pending process of data extraction, validation, auditing, and loading that enables administrators and users with on demand access that ties to the host system(s).
When it comes to checking out new vendors, the last thing a user wants is to try to make a process more efficient and end up with more work..!
Great comment and as I tell all our clients and new prospects, “You’ve invested millions in to your core systems – now let us provide you with accurate and trusted answers to your most critical performance needs!” Our solution was designed specifically so that users can not only access data and information in an organized way, but so they can “trust” their decisions through our proprietary business performance engine.

Q: To that end, what does your product support system look like?
We are a leading cloud based performance management company with roughly 60 people and growing. Our support model is essentially enabled 24/7 through our support team being global, and is primarily conducted through our PowerAssist tracking and management solution for support. Our mission is to treat our clients like gold. We only hire people that share this same vision.

Q: If there’s an issue that involves MEDITECH, how does a product support handle resolution with the customer?
Our Client Support team has automation built into the data integration and validation process that tracks IT source issues. Any such issue is tracked back to the source extract (MEDITECH in this case) to provide system administrators with timely alerts to help streamline the process and resolve the issue.

Q: Last but not least, if you were to pick one thing MEDITECH is doing spot on and another that you think they could work on, what would they be?
Spot On: MEDITECH hospitals appear to have a loyal following. Their systems appear to work well with users on the clinical end to trap detailed information.
Spot Off: At their core, MEDITECH is great at trapping clinical and detailed patient information. They are not a data integration and performance management company, just like many of the HIS vendors. That is a missing component and deeply required by all healthcare organizations striving to stay alive. At PowerHealth OnDemand, we are a Cloud-based performance management company that happens to bridge desperate data with multiple systems so that organizations can survive, thrive, and prepare to change in the future. Wisely.