Greenway Health addresses the most key factor when designing an EHR – People 

Q: Tell me about your journey from physician to chief medical officer.  

A: I received both my undergraduate degree in political science and my medical degree from Brown University. Following medical school, I completed my residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Miami / Jackson Memorial Hospital. Additionally, I earned an MBA from the University of Michigan.   

 I am fortunate to have worked one-on-one with patients as a primary care physician and am now able to impact the healthcare ecosystem on a larger scale through EHR consulting and development. Sometimes, I view this as practicing medicine on a macro scale. As the Chief Medical Officer for Greenway Health, I have a broad range of influence on EHR development and design allowing me to help improve clinical workflows leading to improving patient outcomes.  

I began the transition to working in healthcare IT when I was an attending physician at a hospital where, prior to Meaningful Use, we worked to implement an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. During that period, I served on our vendor’s advisory board and wanted to help create a system that clinicians liked to use. Clinicians working in the EHR space should look at what users are trying to accomplish and continually strive to make things better for both EHR users and patients. Look at the what and the why, and you will get workflows right.   

Q: What do you think is the single most important thing an EHR should do?  

A: Start with the what and why, everything follows from that It is essential to create a system clinicians like to use by creating efficient workflows that support desired patient outcomes. 

For example, our EHR must promote efficiency with a coordinated design, including reducing clicks, but put patient care first. Focusing on these objectives supports improved user satisfaction, enhancing the ability for them to provide quality care.  

When I moved to the vendor side, I used these objectives to guide my work while always trying to keep the end user experience and patient outcomes front and center. When involved in engineering questions I like to ask; Does it make the system more stable? Does it make the system faster? We care about these questions to solve the pain points of workflows and clinician satisfaction.   

At Greenway Health, we focus on a person-centered design methodology promoting a modern experience and clinician-focused workflows. It saves the clinician's time to put the patient at the forefront. This work helps improve overall outcomes.

Q: How can providers ease their daily pain points through technology?   

A: One way we streamline workflows and increase efficiency for our providers is to automate manual processes and improve a patient’s self-service capabilities. Creating automatic reminders for patients to check-in to their appointment or using text messaging to reach patients where they are, increases patient engagement and eases staff burden.   

Additionally, many patients prefer to take their healthcare into their own hands, so we built on that feedback through online check-in, appointment scheduling, and online bill pay.   

Q: A technology partner is especially important to the success of a practice. What are the ways providers can optimize their tech? What should they focus on?   

A: A practice should look for a true partner and, at Greenway, that is something we strive to be. There is aways room for improvement and practices must be able to work with their technology partner on those improvements whether they be within the EHR system or the surrounding infrastructure. Through measuring clinician workflow satisfaction or client satisfaction, overall, we gain a deeper understanding of our products and services from client sentiment to product performance. Greenway is highly ranked for its outstanding client feedback on our Intergy product. Importantly, we obtain client feedback in a number of ways and use that feedback to help inform enhancements to our EHR solutions. Some technology partners struggle with flexibility or a lack of upgrades, but at Greenway we  continually look to improve our solutions to provide clients with the greatest value.  

Q: How do you approach changes in the EHR design?   

A: Before we even determine what enhancements we want to make to our solutions, we connect with our clients to listen and to learn. We sit with our clients and determine their pain points, listen to their ideas and solutions, and have a meaningful conversation on a future-forward approach to changes in the EHR.   

We developed a long-term approach to changes with multiple client touchpoints through Client Advisory Boards, our Early Adopter Program, and more to ensure the features and enhancements that are implemented into the EHR software serve clinicians in a way that benefits them and their patients.   

Q: In what ways do you work with clinicians to enhance and optimize the EHR system?  

A: Greenway works to optimize specialty-specific workflows and continually looks to improve user efficiency. We want to make ambulatory practices successful, so it is important we listen to feedback and iterate on those ideas. In addition to creating a reliable system, we are actively reviewing existing processes click-by-click. With our user experience team we rate each step of the process on its difficulty level, potential for confusion, and resulting cognitive load. From there, we evaluate and create ways to streamline the process and create a more intuitive solution. The goal - creating a better user experience.  

At Greenway, we are focused on empowering providers, supporting better patient outcomes, and building healthier communities. When there is a true partnership between a practice and its health IT vendor, together, we can evolve the status quo and create systems that are hugely beneficial.  

Like I was saying before, ongoing focus on the “what and why” and ensuring that the needs of the people using the system are incorporated into the design will help improve patient outcomes, reduce burnout, and (hopefully) create an EHR system people actually like to use.  My goal is to help create one that people love to use, but will settle for one that they both like and see value in using.