As always, the attendees of our recent Ed Talks-Live! webinars posed some great questions to Munson Healthcare President and CEO Ed Ness and MHC Chief Information Officer Michael Saad.
These “Ed FAQs” cover topics like our Regional Care Transformation Plan, VOICE Reports, One Patient Record, Artificial Intelligence, and more. If you missed July’s Ed Talks and want to watch a recording at your convenience, it can be viewed here.
Regional Care Transformation Plan
What progress can you report on the Petoskey Community Health Center?
Ed Ness (EN): The Petoskey Community Health Center is an outpatient center that will have an Urgent Care, physician offices, imaging offices and specialists. We're developing the architectural plans right now and once those are refined over the coming weeks; we'll have a better idea of the exact timing for the roll out of the center. This is all part of our Regional Care Transformation Plan and we’re pleased to be expanding in the Petoskey area. It's an exciting development for Munson Healthcare and we look forward to its opening.
In some communities it's been tough to translate the Regional Care Transformation Plan, particularly in Grayling. What are we doing to make sure that folks in the Grayling area know what services are still available?
EN: There's good work going on in Grayling, and I’m impressed with the rounding and employee forums that are taking place so we know what's happening on the front lines. We will continue to meet with the public and we've worked with the local media to get some clarifying stories out around Grayling in the Crawford County Avalanche. We have plans to do more community outreach, meetings and coffees in the months ahead. I want to reinforce that Grayling Hospital will continue to be a vital part of MHC, where we will continue to perform surgeries, maintain a 24/7 Emergency Department, provide laboratory and radiology services and other kinds of care. We’ll be delivering babies in Grayling through 2026 and after that, we’ll still continue to have full prenatal care there.
I appreciate the work of the East Region leadership team through the Regional Care process. If you have specific questions or if you're hearing potentially inaccurate things in the community, please reach out to your leader. We need to make sure they know about it and can address it.
Patient Flow and Staffing
As we increase the number of transfers throughout the system and into the Emergency Department, what are we doing to increase staff and to work on a better flow of patients?
EN: Since Joe Hurshe came on board at Munson Medical Center, he’s been doing a lot of good work looking at patient flow, wait times and processes within the Emergency Department, and then also working on how we are handling our flow of patients from the ED up to other floors after they are admitted.
This is not just important for MMC but for our community hospitals, as patients wait to be transferred into MMC. We know it's very busy this summer and every year that creates flow issues, but we're diligently working through them.
The second part of that question was on staffing, and I appreciate Shelley Spencer's leadership in addressing both sides of that equation. One part is bringing more people into the system. There’s data we look at which compares month-over-month employment of our new hires last year to this year. Every month this year, that has been up compared to last year.
At the same time, there’s lots of work going on in reducing turnover and building a stronger culture, ensuring that once we bring people onboard, they stay. We're headed in the right direction and seeing good progress.
VOICE Reporting
What do you see as the way we should use VOICE reports? I'm concerned that it's becoming a complaint department.
EN: The VOICE Report system is about getting to the “why” behind an event, not “who did something” during an event. We're always on that journey to improve. The goal is to get information so we can find out why things are happening — and make improvements to our systems so they don’t happen again. Dr. Santangelo and his team use the VOICE system to get feedback on how we're providing care, in a non-punitive way. I’m proud of our teams for using the system which has caused many important changes within our healthcare system improving both safety and quality.
One Patient Record
Will PTO and Spring Break vacation plans be factored into the new OPR Wave 2 Go Live date?
Michael Saad (MS): We do not have a definitive date for Wave 2, but we want you to know that Spring Break will be factored into a go-live date decision once we have the testing results from IT2 in September. We are currently looking at a go-live date in Q1 of calendar year 2025.
Can you describe some of the issues that caused the delay of One Patient Record Wave 2?
MS: I’ll start off by saying I share in the disappointment for the delay that many of you have. I know how impactful this project is to our employees and patients, and I'm excited to see us successfully move to a single EHR and billing platform. We want to make sure we have effective and stable systems and are being very thoughtful about how we roll this out.
The issues that caused the delay came from Wave 2, Integration System (IT1) testing, where we discovered some revenue cycle issues. We’re working towards a fully integrated system, where the clinical systems are closely connected to the revenue cycle systems, and it's that integration between the two systems where we encountered some issues.
The team is making really good progress in addressing these issues, and we are preparing to perform another round of testing in late August. I'm confident these issues will be fully resolved, and we will be able to continue to move forward with our go-live planning.
Will there be a better system for outside records in PowerChart? Sometimes it's hard to filter through outside documents.
MS: This is a two-part question and answer. The first part is working with other health systems in the state to ensure that we're exchanging the relevant clinical data, and we're actively working on that. We're also looking at products and solutions that will help us do that seamlessly within the EHR.
This way, when a patient presents in our ED or at one of our clinics, we can see what lab tests or imaging tests were done at another health system. This will speed up the process, ensure that patients are not getting duplicate testing, and arm our clinicians with the right information to help make the appropriate clinical decisions.
The second part of the question is about locating outside documents within Cerner today. Standardizing how we store and retrieve outside records will be part of the optimization process as we go forward. Once we get through Wave 2, we'll be looking at how we ensure outside documents (like PDF forms or scanned images) are entered in an easily searchable way. We'll work with Oracle Health to ensure that we've got the best practices in place for that, too.
Artificial Intelligence
When will Munson have a policy and education on the appropriate use of Artificial Intelligence in the medical setting, specifically Chat GPT and other similar products?
MS: We are working on AI policy. We're putting together policies and procedures that will apply to all of us. We’re also working on providing tools for each of you to use AI in a protected way to ensure that all our data is kept secure.
I'll be working closely with Corporate Communications in the coming weeks and months, and you'll hear more about what those tools will look like. We’re also going to provide education and training on how we’ll use these tools to better our environment and to help our patients.