Running A Physician Practice With An HL7 Interface

In the past, it was possible for an individual with good secretarial skills and some basic knowledge of medical terminology to administer a physician practice. Those days are long gone, as today’s healthcare administrators must be skilled in systems like an HL7 interface in order for the practice to remain competitive. This necessitates a level of technical skill that exceeds that required of past administrators. Anyone who is considering entering this profession must be equipped with the knowledge required to succeed.
Health facilities are being mandated to convert patient records to electronic format, called electronic medical records (EMRs). This means that doctor offices will each have an EMR system provided by one of many vendors. These systems implement standards outlined Body Care Gift Set by HL7, or health level 7, a healthcare practice community. The standards facilitate health information exchange between a doctor’s office, lab, and hospital. Streamlined patient care and reduction of errors during treatment are two of the main results.
With so many EMR systems available and the ability for each EMR vendor to implement HL7 differently, implementing an EMR interface to a physician system is a complex task. Often, this is beyond the expertise of even the most technical health administrator, so an outside vendor is retained Valley Medical Center Map for EMR integration. This IT professional creates the integration technology framework that enables the doctor’s office to electronically send orders to the hospital and lab. Each party works from the same medical records, viewing and editing the information as necessary.
Whether the doctor is logging into the physician portal or the lab or hospital is using its own portal, each views the same information. This consistency is designed to increase collaboration during treatment, lower costs stemming from redundancies, and reduce errors. Health administrators and physicians must be well-versed in the use of the system because it is inevitable that they will need to know how it works, from various perspectives.
Though building the HL7 interface may be left to a vendor, the health administrator may perform many of the other roles. This includes teaching the doctor how to access the physician portal and do the computerized physician order entry, or CPOE. It also entails teaching staff how to use the system and ensuring that there are no glitches in the process of health information exchange. In some cases, the administrator may be called upon to make updates in demographic or billing information within the system.