Story from the Front Lines: The Journey to Meaningful Use

Idaho's Dr. Stephen Montamat Uses EHR to Boost Vaccination Rates by 71%

St. Luke's Internal Medicine, part of St. Luke's Health System in Boise, ID has been recognized for their work in using electronic health records (EHRs) to improve vaccination rates. A new EHR system was integral to the improvement in documented vaccination rates for patients 65 and older. The facility improved their pneumococcal rates by 71 percent in just a nine-month period in 2009.

Driving the transition was Dr. Stephen Montamat. Dr. Montamat says he and his staff originally assessed the current state of how they addressed immunization status for patients and then took that baseline information to look at the future to make strategic decisions. This work could not have been done without implementing EHR methodology into the practice. More importantly, vaccination rates may not have improved as dramatically over such a short period of time.

When asked if Dr. Montamat had any suggestions for those just beginning to make their journey from a paper-based system to electronic, he gave two pieces of advice:

"Set expectations. The rewards are great, but an EHR is a big change. It's as much about hardware and software as it is about workflow. The transition requires changing the way practices think and do things in their paper practices and make appropriate workflow adjustments.

"Prepare. Do as much in advance of the change as you can. Backload problem lists and medication lists. Make sure lab, x-ray, and other interfaces are in place before you go live. Know what kind of templates you will want to use and set them up ahead of time. For example, think about issues like how you will have your system manager perform regular tests such as Prothrombin Time."

The piece of advice that comes up again and again with Dr. Montamat is that you must know that you will be changing your workflow processes. It's key to successful adaptation. And also, and maybe even more importantly, "Always look at things from the patient's point of view."