Moving Forward on the New Healthcare in Western New Jersey

Weinstein: We can go to an ATM machine and we don’t think twice about putting that piece of plastic in there, and that we’ll get money out of it. But we’re still uncomfortable with the fact that someone all the way around the world might get access to my health records.

Mammary: We’re going to get to stage 7 on the HIMSS Analytics schematic. We’ve got bits and pieces up to like 5 ½… We’re just going live with CPOE this fall. So at the end of this year, we’ll be at 5.5. And we’ll probably be at stage 7 in two years. Parts of stage 7 we already have already, in terms of ambulatory continuity.

Is your health system participating in a statewide HIE?

Mamary: That’s correct, Jersey Health Connect HIE, a statewide HIE. It includes participation from Atlantic Health, St. Barnabas, CentraState, Hackensack, JFK Medical Center, Somesert Medical Center, St. Peter’s Medical Center, Trinitas, St. Claire’s Hospital, Robert Wood Johnson, Holy Name, and Children’s Specialized Hospital, and us. There are 13 organizations altogether that are involved, and the HIE is using RelayHealth as its core IT solution.

Is the HIE live yet with data exchange?

Mammary: We’re going live this coming quarter; a couple of the hospitals are already live. Atlantic Health and JFK and Somerset are live on this now. We’ll be live by October.

What have the biggest lessons learned been so far?

Weinstein: First of all, when you think you’ve figured out how much money you need, double it! But the biggest lesson really is that the amount of time and effort required to do all this truly are bigger than you’d think. And people say to us, we want to create tomorrow what it’s taken you 13 years to build. And I’ll say to them, you can start tomorrow, but give yourselves at least 10 years.

Mammary: And I’ve been in healthcare IT since the late 70s. And I’ve never seen this exponential level of change and demands [on provider organizations]. With ICD-10 and meaningful use and healthcare reform, and dealing with the state regulations, and making sure that we spend enough time testing and educating folks, it’s endless. I have never seen anything like this.

At least now, following this summer’s Supreme Court ruling around healthcare reform, there’s policy clarity now, correct?

Weinstein: Yes, I think so. And I think we’ve all come to the realization—I don’t really care who ends up in the White House. I see individual things being changed and tweaked. But we all know at the end of the day, we can’t afford to throw it out (healthcare reform). At the end of the day, we all know that if we don’t find a way to raise the bar on quality and lower costs, we’re going to fail as a nation.