Healthcare Triangle Supported Methodist Rehabilitation Center with Cost-Effective MEDITECH Expanse Data Integration Implementation
The Client
Methodist Rehabilitation Center (MRC), located in Jackson, Mississippi, is a comprehensive rehabilitation hospital with featured programs specifically designed to treat people who have had a stroke, brain injury, or spinal injury. MRC is accredited by the Joint Commission and by CARF, the Commission on Accreditation for Rehabilitation Facilities. MRC gained worldwide prominence for its ground-breaking West Nile virus research conducted for Neuroscience and Neurological Recovery and was named as one of America’s Best Rehabilitation Centers by U.S. News & World Report. MRC signed a historic affiliation agreement with the University of Mississippi Medical Center, with a shared goal of fostering collaboration in the areas of neuroscience research, clinical care, and education, and to staff the UMMC Division of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
The Challenge
In 2019, MRC migrated from an older McKesson system to MEDITECH Expanse. As part of this change, the site took the opportunity to review its third-party vendors and the process of data transfer between the vendors. MRC had built several proprietary interfaces and file transfers between the third-party applications to provide data sharing. These systems were complex and difficult to administrate and MRC recognized that they did not have the technical or support resources to handle these interfaces.
Why Healthcare Triangle
Healthcare Triangle provides quality healthcare data integration experts, with hospital experience, for migration and enhancement projects. Our expert’s have hands on experience in migrating to MEDITECH Expanse for a similar rehabilitation medical center customer which is supported to meet their requirements. With proven experience in successful remote-consulting implementation services for MEDITECH’s Expanse software, Healthcare Triangle presented a balanced approach for MRC and facilitated a primarily remote implementation model that allowed the site to move forward in this endeavour, while enabling MRC to meet the quality and financial goals for the engagement
The Solution
Healthcare Triangle reviewed MRC’s current integration with third-party applications and determined which updates were required in the integration model for MEDITECH Expanse. MRC was previously held to a foundational interoperability maturity level with several customized point-to-point interfaces between their EHR and third-party applications. Healthcare Triangle suggested improvements for this current interoperability environment to increase their productivity and reduce IT operational costs. Existing MRC integration has various issues including:
- No central administration for interfaces as all were developed as point-to-point integrations
- Several file transfer methods, all of which were hosted on various platforms using different toolsets
- Several points of redundancy were noted, such as multiple versions of ADT or results interfaces deployed to each vendor
MRC’s IT resources looked for direction from an experienced team to assist in the process. Healthcare Triangle engaged MRC IT resources on a “vendor-neutral” selection of integration engines and services available to meet the needs. The key values like budget, capabilities for growth, cloud deployment, and support services were reviewed by the team. Once the selection process was completed, Healthcare Triangle assisted with procurement and began the deployment of a cloud-hosted integration platform with the MRC IT team. This implementation enhanced their opportunities to expand future interoperability needs while updating their current environment to standard exchanging methods utilizing the latest available code sets. The instigated solutions put MRC on the path to achieve a maturity level of semantic interoperability according to HIMSS benchmarks and following improvements.
- Provided a platform for MEDITECH Expanse to exchange all data with third-party applications as needed with one system
- In addition to HL7/EDI messaging, several reports and downloaded files required to be exchanged for the revenue cycle team were given
- Reviewed the requirements and deployed cloud-hosted robotic process automation (RPA) system to distribute the aforementioned documents on a scheduled basis
During this migration to MEDITECH, Healthcare Triangle provided the integration resources to test and deploy these new interfaces, and MRC’s IT team was given the necessary knowledge transfer. Post implementation, for building additional interfaces, Healthcare Triangle supported MRC’s IT team as an extended partner.
Benefits
- Healthcare Triangle developed a cost-effective support model that allowed the use of cloud hosted systems, proven methodologies, and innovative technologies to reduce the GFC commitment of time, based on resourcing challenges.
- Our superior quality of delivery was evident across the continuum of the project. Starting with the current integration review, through the projected future design, education, and build phases to the successful testing and deployment of integration and automation services for MRC’s Expanse system.
- Healthcare Triangle’s provisioning of a cloud hosted integration platform and RPA system coupled with MEDITECH Expanse hosted in the cloud provides a seamless integration of their data. These services provide all MEDITECH data integration in the cloud
- Leveraging the toolset selected with Healthcare Triangle, MRC is capable of monitoring and administrating all integrated data from one system. The automation console quickly provides an overview of scheduled processes and any errors in transmission needing attention.
- With Healthcare Triangle’s solution, MRC has added third-party application trading partners and integrations quickly with minimal additional effort from their IT team.
MRC is spending $100k less operationally on this model as well:
- Lower IT staff administration costs for interface monitoring in single view – $10k/year
- Decreased support cost from 3PA and EHR vendor by $25k/year (no point-to-point interface costs)
- RPA processes save $13k/year – 2 hours/day in labor costs
- Other processes identified and interoperability applied:
- Vendor invoice automation – labor cost savings of $2k/year
- Automated census reporting to outside agencies and referral networks – labor cost savings of $6k/year
- Outside lab testing/results reporting, provides discrete data in EHR – labor cost savings of $22k/year
- Claims automation and submissions – labor cost savings of $5k/ year
- Cold feed data from third-party applications – labor cost savings of $20k/year
Following this innovative and proven model, MRC, with Healthcare Triangle as their interoperability partner, successfully went live with all MEDITECH Expanse EHR clinical modules fully integrated early April 2020. MRC continues to realize the benefits of their integrated EHR as they continue to partner with Healthcare Triangle to optimize as opportunities present