Message from
Senior Management

History in the Making

John Danahey
Vice President
Sales and Marketing

Meaningful Use
in Action -
Med Reconciliation

New Mobile Phlebotomy
Website Launched

Top 100 U.S.
Hospitals

John Danahey, Vice President - Sales and Marketing

Iatric Systems has been fortunate to have a long history in the MEDITECH marketplace.  This year we are celebrating our 20^th year of service to MEDITECH users worldwide.  Over these twenty years, we have seen the introduction of multiple MEDITECH platforms, including MIIS $T (MAGIC), NPR (MAGIC), Client Server and 6.x (MEDITECH Advanced Technology). 

Each platform has brought progress to MEDITECH users with new modules, features and user interfaces.  (Does anyone remember when you couldn’t go backwards to a previous prompt in MIIS $T?)  At the same time, each change in platform has caused similar questions and concerns about data conversion, loss of features and functionality, report writing and response times. 

History is a great teacher.  Our twenty years of experience with the MEDITECH HIS is an asset we value and one we are happy to share with our customers.  As you begin planning your next upgrade, don’t hesitate to contact us.  We are always willing to leverage our experience to help build a brighter future for your organization.

Meaningful Use in Action - Med Reconciliation

Can you compare and merge two or more medication lists into a single one that is electronically displayed in real time to support 2011 Meaningful Use compliance? Iatric Systems is happy to report that we can! Our Medication Reconciliation routines are quick and comprehensive, providing the clinical decision support we all crave and the support for 2011 Meaningful Use compliance we all need.

Medication Reconciliation was a significant endeavor for hospitals long before Meaningful Use gurus decided it was important! Of course, Meaningful Use requirements have turned up the heat and perhaps provided us with hospital administration buy-in that we may have lacked before. 

Meaningful Use requires us to:

“Perform medication reconciliation at relevant encounters and each transition of care.”  Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 8 / Wednesday, January 13, 2010 / Rules and Regulations / Page 2028

Most of us have been performing medication reconciliation to some degree for quite some time, but now the requirement elaborates:

“Electronically complete medication reconciliation of two or more medication lists (compare and merge) into a single medication list that can be electronically displayed in real time.” Federal Register / Vol. 75, No. 8 / Wednesday, January 13, 2010 / Rules and Regulations / Page 2028

See meaningful Medication Reconciliation in action with PDI 3.0 by attending one of the webcast demonstrations noted below. To register to attend, simply select one of the dates below and follow the instructions: 

For more information, please contact Pamela Brock at Pamela.Brock@iatric.com or 978-805-3170.

We are excited to announce the launch of a new website dedicated to mobile phlebotomy and barcode specimen collection.  Please bookmark http://mobilab.iatric.com to help you stay current.

The website’s Knowledge Center page provides laboratory news related to patient safety and the prevention of mislabeled specimens. On it you’ll find recent articles and white papers from respected sources such as CAP Today, MLO Online and ADVANCE for Administrators of the Laboratory.  

You will also have the opportunity to read how hospitals are improving patient safety and staff productivity with MobiLab, our mobile phlebotomy barcode specimen collection solution. MobiLab has been ranked #1 by KLAS in the Specimen Collection Barcoding Category for 2007, 2008 and 2009 (Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services, www.KLASresearch.com).

Visit http://mobilab.iatric.com today to learn more!

Congratulations to all of the hospitals named to the top 100 U.S. Hospitals list for 2009 by the Thomas Reuters: National Benchmarks study.  More than 2,900 short-term, acute-care, non-federal hospitals were studied but only 100 hospitals made the list.

The study evaluates 10 performance areas, including: mortality, medical complications, patient safety, average length of stay, expenses, profitability, patient satisfaction, adherence to clinical standards of care and post-discharge mortality and readmission rates for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia.

Kay Jackson, Marketing Manager - Financial

Joe Cocuzzo, Vice President - NPR Services

Detail and Summary Report in One (MAGIC or C/S)

One practice which we highly recommend is to try to make reports generic and flexible and avoid having multiple copies with hardcoded selections or query values.

Some examples:

Rather than hardcode each manager's departments into a report (and create a version for each manager), use %MIS.GL.DEPT.user.okay(@ dept) to check financial access and use one report for all managers.  For more details see our tip from April 2004.

Rather than type each prompt in the picture, and code each query mnemonic (and need to change the report every time the screen is changed), use MIS.SCREEN.print in your report.  For more details see our tip from June 2008.

When you write a statistical report, it is common to create two versions, one which includes detail records to allow the user to verify your work (or to see detail records when desired) and another that is a summary only.

To do this you simply copy the detail version to another report and change the Detail prompt on Page 1 (a/k/a "General Tab") to N.  I call this a "Nancy Reagan report" ("Just say No to detail").

The problem with this is that you now have two reports to maintain instead of one.

It is relatively easy to provide a combined detail/summary report by using the LC (line check) attribute to allow the user to run a single report in "detail" or "summary" mode.

First add a Y/N query to the selections with the IG (Ignore) operator to allow the user to indicate whether they would like to include detail records.

Next, add an LC to suppress the detail section of the report if the user says "N" to detail.

You can use LCR (Line check range) if you have more than one detail line in your report.

Any numeric regular field placed in a trailer (TR or TKn) region and any computed field with a statistical function defined (FNC=TOT, FNC=AVG etc), will work whether you elect to print detail or not.  However, if you have a computed field in the detail region and in the trailer, if you suppress the detail with a line check, that field will no longer total.

The solution is to copy the detail computed field into another field, add a FNC=TOT attribute and place the copy in any trailer regions (TKn, TR) where it is needed.

This issue occurs only for computed (xx) fields, a standard numeric field like @ item.amount (in this BAR.BCH example) will total whether the detail is suppressed or not.

You can find additional NPR Tips on our website at http://www.iatric.com/information/npr-tips.asp, as well as information about our on-site NPR Report Writer Training and NPR Report Writing Services.

Follow Joe's blog at OnFocus.

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If you received this newsletter via email, you may give us feedback by simply replying to the email.  However, if you would like to reach someone directly, please feel free to contact one of the individuals listed below.

Joel Berman, President, Joel.Berman@iatric.com, 978-805-4101
John Danahey, VP, Sales & Marketing, John.Danahey@iatric.com, 978-805-4153

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