Paul Minton, RN, CCRN serves as Vice President of Product Management for Allscripts.
On April 11th, Paul will speak on a panel at Becker's Hospital Review 9th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Paul's session, click here.
Question: Who or what are the disruptors that have your attention? Why?
Paul Minton: Lately, I have seen some of the biggest disruptors come from outside the healthcare industry. For example, with recent studies that show lack of access to reliable transportation contributing $150 billion in healthcare costs, rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft have brought consumer-centric services to healthcare and are already making a difference with decreasing missed appointments, increasing patient satisfaction and decreasing transportation costs.
Another disrupter is Apple, of course. Specifically, the recent release of the Health App and now the release of health records on the iPhone. What is disruptive about this is not so much the technology but what I see happening to interoperability now that Apple is involved. The last major disruption led by Apple was the move from flash to HTML5. Apple will do the same here as it embraces fast healthcare interoperability resources Argonaut open standards for healthcare. This will drive all industry vendors to standardize on this for true interoperability, which is needed to realize the vision of a patient-centric portable health record.
One last disrupter inside healthcare is the 2bPrecise Genomic platform (for the sake of transparency, an Allscripts-owned company). This is a disrupter because it makes genomic insights actionable at the point of care into the clinician's daily workflow. Already in use providing drug to genome checking at the Rochester, Min.-based Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health, it will soon become the 7th patient right for medication administration — right patient, right med, right time, right route, right dose, and soon because of 2bPrecise, the right efficacy.
Q: Describe one of your best colleagues. What it is that person does/brings that makes them indispensable to your organization?
PM: This person brings knowledge and a get-it-done attitude to work every day. Most importantly, he/she represents the quality of professionalism. This person knows what to say and what not to say in front of peers and clients.
Q: What did you notice about your healthcare experience the last time you were at the receiving end as a patient?
PM: My last experience was just a few weeks ago when I went in for a heart view scan to determine my calcium scoring. While my experience may be different than most, as this is the hospital where I most recently practiced nursing, I was surprised at the decreased noise and level of communication between the staff. It was a very silent sort of experience. I did not notice the constant ringing of the phones used to communicate arrivals and other logistics. Instead, I noticed large display boards with patient flow information and staff with handheld devices with real-time notifications. It was peaceful, and the operations seemed to run smoothly which made for a good patient experience.
Q: All healthcare is local. What about your market influences your organization's business or operations most?
PM: As Allscripts market is the entire globe and encompasses all Hospital and Ambulatory solutions, it is extremely important to recognize that healthcare is provided at the local level. What influences us is making sure we provide best practice national standards and then collaborate with healthcare organizations to make the changes needed to meet the local workflows.
Q: Please share a new consumer-centric capability your organization has built or tapped into within the past 18 months.
PM: Allscripts recently joined forces with Lyft, an on-demand transportation company, to incorporate nonemergency transportation directly into the physician's workflow and eliminate transportation barriers to healthcare. When patients' transportation needs are noted in Allscripts EHR, an automated workflow schedules Lyft transportation for that patient. Additionally, tracking boards will provide real-time notifications of patient pickup and estimated time of arrival for providers and other members of the care team.
Allscripts also formed a partnership with Conversa Health, an automated patient conversation platform, to improve its patient engagement and care coordination services. The Allscripts customer base of 2,500-plus hospitals and health systems now has access to Conversa's conversation platform, which automates personalized conversations with patients based on a library of clinical responses to conditions like asthma, diabetes and hypertension. The goal is to help patients with chronic conditions manage their care between visits and improve communication related to health experiences.
In addition, we reach 13 million-plus patients and work with 3,500-plus organizations nationwide through the company's patient portal, Allscripts FollowMyHealth. The portal's telehealth offerings give patients access to an organization's services via additional ""virtual"" modalities of care, including asynchronous email visits, real-time video visits or achieve remote monitoring and compliance. These services can be deployed through a patient's EHR-agnostic FollowMyHealth Patient Portal.
Q: How do you define patient engagement?
PM: Healthcare no longer begins and ends at the hospital door. Modern healthcare consumers understand the benefit of engagement, and they expect to be active participants in their care. We believe the patient is at the center of everything we do. We partner with providers to deliver an improved patient experience, which includes enabling patients to engage in their own health. Having a solution that gives healthcare organizations the tools to reach patients directly with ongoing communication, effective education and regular interaction is critical. We believe the right tools will make it easy for caregivers to engage and quickly respond to consumers while also offering them full, immediate access to their healthcare information.