At the 18th Annual Ambulatory Surgery Centers Conference in Chicago on Oct. 27, Jeff Blankinship, president and CEO of Surgical Notes; Marion K. Jenkins, PhD, founder and CEO of QSE Technologies; Scott Palmer, president and COO of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Division of SourceMedical Solutions; and Faris Zureikat, administrator of the North Texas Surgery Center in Dallas, discussed health IT issues for ASCs.
While HIT has the potential to improve efficiency in ASCs, many challenges remain. "Technology needs to be a servant of the people [instead of] people serving health IT," Mr. Zureikat said. For technology to act as a tool rather than a taskmaster in ASCs, centers will need to undergo a cultural transformation, Mr. Blankinship said. ASCs can accomplish this cultural shift by driving HIT initiatives from the top-down, according to Mr. Palmer. ASC leaders need to encourage physicians to use HIT, such as electronic medical records, every day for implementation to be successful.
In addition to reducing administrative staff hours and increasing the efficiency of retrieving charts, HIT is important for ASCs as a competitive tool, according to Dr. Jenkins. As more and more hospitals implement sophisticated technologies, ASCs will need to share data to stay competitive. However, the need to remain competitive in the healthcare industry does not mean ASCs should try to adopt full HIT capabilities over night, Mr. Zureikat said. He said adoption should start slow and be an "evolutionary process."
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While HIT has the potential to improve efficiency in ASCs, many challenges remain. "Technology needs to be a servant of the people [instead of] people serving health IT," Mr. Zureikat said. For technology to act as a tool rather than a taskmaster in ASCs, centers will need to undergo a cultural transformation, Mr. Blankinship said. ASCs can accomplish this cultural shift by driving HIT initiatives from the top-down, according to Mr. Palmer. ASC leaders need to encourage physicians to use HIT, such as electronic medical records, every day for implementation to be successful.
In addition to reducing administrative staff hours and increasing the efficiency of retrieving charts, HIT is important for ASCs as a competitive tool, according to Dr. Jenkins. As more and more hospitals implement sophisticated technologies, ASCs will need to share data to stay competitive. However, the need to remain competitive in the healthcare industry does not mean ASCs should try to adopt full HIT capabilities over night, Mr. Zureikat said. He said adoption should start slow and be an "evolutionary process."
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