February 2012
	"Meaningful" Talk with Trover Health System Trover Health System had no shortage of work in 2011. Completing 13 software implementations and 30 system changes, the staff still managed to make Meaningful Use attainment a top priority. The hard work paid off as Trover, now in its reporting period, will be attesting to Stage 1 Meaningful Use in April this year. Located in Madisonville, Ky., Trover serves more than 31,000 emergency department (ED) patients annually. Approximately 50 percent of inpatients come through the ED. Due to the ED patient volume, hospital leadership decided to use the "All ED Patients" method to attest to Stage 1. In January 2010, directors from Trover's hospital and physician practice began meeting regularly and developed a Meaningful Use attainment roadmap. They spent countless hours educating staff about the initiative in order to gain buy-in. The team also leaned on its inpatient EHR vendor and T-System to develop scorecards that would track the hospital's progress. "We went a step beyond staff engagement in order to be successful with our Meaningful Use efforts," said Trover Vice President of Operations Timothy Dukes. "We sought staff involvement. Anyone who would be touched by Meaningful Use truly became plugged in and invested during every phase of this goal. Had our employees not breathed our systems, breathed Meaningful Use, we would have simply been playing catch-up. Instead, Trover is on the cutting edge." Frequently pulling reports from The T SystemEV and Trover's inpatient EHR helped reassure hospital leaders that the facility is on track to meet Meaningful Use criteria. "My advice to other hospitals planning to attest is to have a solid networking system," said Diana Jackson, Trover ED and Merle M. Mahr Cancer Center director. "You can learn so much from other hospitals. Rely on those early adopters who encountered the first set of challenges because you can draw from their successes and failures." Trover Revenue Cycle Director Tammy Ripa also recommends taking advantage of EHR vendor resources: "The T-System team brought knowledge and experience from helping other hospitals attest. They were very proactive in helping us find solutions to any challenges that popped up. I would also recommend that hospitals encourage their EHR vendors to talk to each other to ensure an easier integration among systems." Dukes, Jackson and Ripa said they plan to leverage the lessons learned from Meaningful Use to transition to ICD-10. "We're going to ensure that we have the key people in place from the get-go as well as a strong governance structure for the IT team," Dukes said. To ask the author of this article a question or seek more information about this topic, please login to MyT-System and post your question or comment in the Hot Topics forum of the MyCommunity Forums page.