Our recent H1N1 vaccination report release proved an interesting case study for the inner workings of Practice Fusion. We often talk about how Practice Fusion's web-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) model allows us a greater degree of flexibility and how we pride ourselves on listening to customers - last week's release demonstrated both points in action.
In the matter of a week, Practice Fusion received a suggestion from a physician user, discussed, researched and ultimately released the feature to our entire user community. For those of you interested in what makes Practice Fusion tick, here's a closer look at that week:
Wednesday - 10/7
Practice Fusion team members visit Dr. Tamara Cheney's practice in Freemont, CA to gather feedback about our EHR in the setting of an active family practice office. During the visit, Dr. Cheney mentions wanting a report to count high-risk H1N1 patients in her practice so she can order vaccines.
Back in the office, the technology team runs the data in a custom report based on ICD-9 codes matching the CDC's H1N1 high-risk criteria (pregnant, children, under 24 years of age, certain chronic conditions under 64 years of age). The report providing patient counts is made it available for Dr. Cheney to securely download online the same day.
Thursday & Friday - 10/8 and 10/9
Practice Fusion's teams discuss how to make the report requested by Dr. Cheney available to the entire user community. We conduct more research into H1N1, the CDC criteria and the vaccine ordering process.
Monday - 10/12
Despite our office being closed for Columbus Day, emails ping back and forth between Practice Fusion's tech, business and medical departments working out the details. The final ICD-9 codes are selected for each of the CDC criteria. Practice Fusion's technology team works to get the report ready for distribution.
Tuesday - 10/13All 21,000 of Pratice Fusion's EHR users can now quickly count the number of high-risk H1N1 patients in their practices and can use those numbers to order vaccines. One of our Facebook contacts responded, saying: "My current EHR couldn't get that data for me. THIS capability has sparked my interest in Practice Fusion."
A query is run across the Practice Fusion patient community that identifies 300,000 candidates for the H1N1 vaccine nationwide. New content is created to accompany the new report and a press release is drafted. We test the H1N1 vaccine report and provide feedback on the new user interface.
Wednesday - 10/14
Exactly one week after being first requested by Dr. Cheney, the H1N1 report is released live overnight to all Practice Fusion EHR users. Our website is updated with information about the new H1N1 report and an email is prepped to be sent in the morning to the entire Practice Fusion community explaining the new feature.
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2 comments:
Sure it's easy to implement a report across all your clients since it won't disrupt the normal workflow. I'd be interested to hear more about what happens when you make a major change to the software. How do users get informed? What notice will they receive? How many won't know and will get mad?
Practice Fusion posts updates to our EHR system about twice a month, often a mix of small and larger changes. New features are designed to enhance functionality without changing workflows and are often prompted by user requests.
As for notification, all the members of a practice receive an email that explains the updates – these usually include a video tutorial too. Practice Fusion also post in-line product videos within the EHR. And if there are questions, our free support team is always on hand to assist.
To date, we haven't had a release with issues or that disrupted our practices, but in that event we would apply our same fast release process to either rolling back the change or issuing an update. Our releases usually take place around midnight to ensure minimal interruption and to have time to make fixes just in case something goes wrong.
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