by Frank Fortner
Timing is an amazing thing. In almost “perfect storm” fashion, MEDITECH hospitals are currently operating in what looks to be the most transitional time in health care information technology history – certainly in the two decades I’ve been working in this industry. The convergence of the push to migrate to Client/Server 6.x and HITECH’s drive to meet Meaningful Use criteria through certified systems over the next few years is a tall order to place on many hospital IT staffs, even the larger ones. In recent days, many hospitals have been forced to rethink (or create for the first time in some cases) their 3-5 year IT strategic plan to meet the demands that the new legislation requires by 2015. In keeping with the blog theme, just where does MEDITECH’s new platform (6.x / FOCUS / Advanced Technology) fit into all of this?
There doesn’t seem to be a single correct answer to that question as it will depend on whom you ask. For some, this “perfect storm” is ironically quite timely and fortuitous, meaning yes, it’s a lot to bite off, but they would have been looking to upgrade from MAGIC to something else anyway, mainly in the hope of securing provider adoption. The new Advanced Technology platform gives these hospitals a viable option that comes from their current vendor of choice. As a colleague of mine has been known to say, “sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.” The only challenge here may be one’s place in the queue and the bandwidth of MEDITECH to convert these systems well before 2015.
Others, even some long-time MEDITECH customers, have simply chosen a different HIS vendor, perhaps looking to capitalize on a more mature platform than 6.x, which currently lacks the basic tools for writing reports to mix data from C/S and AT applications for example. Those will certainly come in time, but for now it highlights the freshman nature of 6.x.
Another response has been, “we’re staying put on MAGIC.” This translates to, “yes, it may look like DOS (according to many physicians) but we’ve invested years in getting it to fit our environment. It’s mature and robust and there are modern 3rd party tools out there to help meet Meaningful Use criteria and allow us to gain provider adoption.”
What does your hospital’s road map to 2015 look like? This could be the most important discussion for many of us in our IT careers, so please feel free to comment and contribute your thoughts.
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