Evergreen Community Health Care: Developing Value-Based Information Systems and Processes

Client Challenge

Evergreen Community Health Care (ECHC) of King and Snohomish counties, Washington, provides residents with a wide range of health and medical services. These include Evergreen Hospital Medical Center, a maternity center, a hospice, a head-injury and rehabilitation center, grief and bereavement services, home care, a cancer program and alternative medicine to address the broad needs of their community.

To keep pace with their mission to serve the community, ECHC decided to reassess their existing information systems. Their historical investment in information technology had been low, and most of their systems were old. In Washington, moreover, Community Health Information Networks had gained ground, posing the longer-term opportunity to share financial and clinical data over the continuum of care. In this context, Senior Management of ECHC decided to develop a long-range strategic systems plan. They thought carefully about the business and medical objectives of their healthcare system, and sought a consulting systems partner who could lead a process to develop a long-term systems plan that would meet these objectives.

Solution Provided by IT Optimizers

ECHC management engaged IT Optimizers to develop a long-term information technology plan. IT Optimizers developed a comprehensive long-range strategic systems plan for ECHC that included:

• Using a systematic business to technology application methodology that showed how business opportunities could be transformed into value-based systems and processes

• Reviewing the current status and direction of information systems and interviewing executive and senior management regarding the future direction of ECHC

• Formulating strategies, alternatives and projects to fulfill the ECHC information systems (IS) objectives, including:

• Aligning future direction of IS with business and medical service goals
• Establishing ECHC IS governance and financing procedures
• Ensuring that effective IS oversight policies be developed regarding system usage, resource expenditures and expected system benefits
  

• Developing an implementation approach and capital budgets for plan initiatives and leading the process for defining and evaluating options

• Addressing the spectrum of information technology alternatives in the context of the need to establish financial and clinical linkages with community health information networks and to provide services over the continuum of care

• IT Optimizers also structured a new information technology director position for Planning and Benefits Achievement, and assisted in the recruiting process for ECHC.

"They're (IT Optimizers) hitting the nail on the head for the things that we really need. The level of trust I have in their strategic planning capabilities, I can't get elsewhere. I can go to a First Consulting Group, but (IT Optimizers) I come away feeling like they gave me a personal touch and there was really an understanding and an involvement in what it is we are trying to do."

—Ray Plumb, Director IS, Evergreen Hospital Medical Center

Benefits

The plan met the business, community, medical and strategic objectives of the management of ECHC. They benefited from the use of an approach that demonstrated how their business and community mandates could be translated into an information systems strategic plan. They also benefited from the feeling of personal involvement in the project, that they were listened to, and that there was "really an understanding in what (ECHC) was trying to do."

• While starting with a process that linked business objectives with systems initiatives, the plan also provided detailed time frames, capital budgets and implementation guidelines for system applications:

• Patient Administrative
• Patient Clinical
• Clinical Department
• General Financial
• Master Patient Index and Clinical Data Repository
• Scheduling
• Physician Practice Management
• Decision Support (administrative, clinical and population based)
• Internet Services, including interactive consumer health information systems
   
  

• Practical technology selection and implementation knowledge was imparted so that ECHC could make wise choices in its moves to replace systems over the next 3-5 years. ECHC management benefited from insights regarding:

• Optimal architecture
• Benefits associated with the use of a cluster approach in vendor selection (i.e., purchasing related systems from a common vendor)
   

• The discussion of numerous ways to maximize the value of information technology investments including data centers, hardware, operations; deployment of standardized hardware and software; incorporation of expected system life cycles and customer service levels in evaluation of options; ensuring that mission-critical systems be Year 2000 ready.

• ECHC benefited from the inclusion of specific tactics for:

• Consumer-oriented access and outreach systems
• Community Measurement Systems
• A framework and Decision Support guidelines for Business and Clinical Improvement
• Communication Network Implementation.

The following chart demonstrates the approach for translating business objectives into systems initiatives.

The following charts provide a bird's eye view of the systems considerations for integrating ECHC's information systems with the community as a whole, consistent with the Washington state initiatives toward financial and clinical information sharing and community health information networks.

For more information about ECHC, please refer to www.evergreenhealthcare.org.

 

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