The "Simple" Sauce for My Successful Informatics Career

Not that I am biased, but I think we all need a Dr. Magee in our career journey! As a brand-new manager, he took me under his wing and guided me on how to help facilitate meaningful change in the medical clinics within the Santa Cruz Medical Group.

His approach? Quite simple actually. He asked me (and the clinical application support staff that I managed) to diligently work at 4 "simple" things in order to most effectively optimize workflows, and design EHR solutions.

So, what is the secret to the "simple" sauce? What are these 4 things? I'll get to them, just hang in there!

The reason this is significant for me to write about is the impact that it made on my career. These tools have followed me every step of the way, allowing me to gain confidence and credibility. Leveraging these tools has equipped me collaborate with highly respected leaders in my organization. I've been able to help facilitate clinically significant and complex initiatives, with outstanding outcomes.

These tools are the foundation for how I work in the field of clinical informatics.

Okay, no more suspense. Here are the tools that have provided the foundation for my successful career.

Ingredient 1 in the "Simple" Sauce: Become an expert at what the EHR could do (and can't do)

We were asked to test and play with every single feature and button, in every single area of the EHR.

Not just learn the features but beat that system up to learn the absolute easiest way to do anything and everything!

If there was something we couldn't figure out, we were asked to reach out to the vendor, and other clinics using the EHR to learn more.

Ingredient 2 in the "Simple" Sauce: Become an expert on the clinic workflows

I mean literally...sit with staff at the different clinics. sit with different people in all of the roles! No one left behind!

Ask what they needed to accomplish with each step of their workflow

Observe what different staff did that was alike. Observe what they did that differed.

Take lots of notes!

Ingredient 3 in the "Simple" Sauce: Combine items 1 and 2 to create a best practice workflow recommendation.

You got it! Take all the different processes that each role needed to complete, and find the easiest, most effective technical workflow to meet the documentation needs.

Then, document the workflow....and test it out, then role play the recommendation the physician and clinic leaders. Yes, they would usually be tweaked a bit. It's quite astounding what happens when you create a little workflow evaluation brain trust!

When you begin to lay current state against a potential future state people get creative! They start thinking outside the box and come up with some pretty ingenious ways to rethink processes to become more efficient!

Ingredient 4 in the "Simple" Sauce: With every new technology, combine 1-3

New technology comes around all the time!

We learned what the new technology is intended to replace or update, and then we get down to the nitty gritty!

It was our job to lay the new proposed solution against the workflow needs of our staff and providers. Every detail!

It was then our job to treat the new technology, just like we did the EHR, and become the expert. Learn every feature, button. Testing out EVERYTHING, and ensuring we clearly understood the impact!

Yes, it took hours! Sometimes days of testing to learn exactly what the impact of the new technology to the clinic's workflows, and sometimes the patient!

Wanna know why this works so well? I hope it is really pretty intuitive and clear. But just to be "Captain Obvious", by becoming the absolute expert on the both the EHR and clinic workflows, it became super easy to help ensure that any and all new technology (from upgrades to new integrations like patient portal and lab interfaces) were thoroughly vetted! We were able to find every bug, shortfall and feature gap.

It enabled us to "smoothly" implement and optimize.

Okay, things seemed rather smooth to our end users by the time we went live with things! On the backside of things, we spent hours and days working out the bugs of technology and workflow!

But it worked. A total recipe for success! Not just a success for that little medical group either.

Now I work at the top enterprise level for a national healthcare system.

This "simple" sauce has helped with every implementation and optimization initiative that I have been engaged in! As a result, some disastrous results have been avoided, and some pretty ingenious designs have also been achieved.

Thanks Dr. Magee!