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Provider Services

• Information System Program Review & Assessment
  
We will quickly and efficiently conduct a review of your IT program to help you assess user perceptions and attitudes towards IT and to determine whether your program is on track and moving in the desired direction. This can be a review of your entire IT program, focus on a specific component of it, or address specific problems or areas needing special attention. We use our industry knowledge, interviewing skills, proven methodologies, and problem solving skills to broadly assess your situation and offer pragmatic suggestions for improvement where appropriate.


• Strategic & Tactical Planning
  
We will lead a thorough and efficient process aimed at helping you to clarify your IT program goals, understand your strategic options for moving forward, and to identify and prioritize the key projects needed to achieve your strategy. Based on those efforts we will then facilitate you to reach agreement on the strategy that best suits your organization. This is done within a framework of matching IT needs to overall clinical and business needs/strategies, while securing multidisciplinary input from key staff and managers throughout your organization. While technology is certainly a key ingredient of the planning process, we stress a clinical/business driven plan rather than a technologically driven one. At the tactical level we will flesh out detailed activities, timing and resource requirements needed to achieve your strategic plan.


• Vendor Evaluation & Selection

Health care providers typically "buy" rather than "build" their software applications. We frequently assist providers in finding the systems/vendors best suited to their organization. We are very flexible in our approach, and will tailor it to meet your needs. Some clients prefer the traditional approach of a full scale request for proposal (RFP) followed by proposal analysis, scripted product demonstrations, vendor HQ visits, site visits etc. Others prefer a more streamlined approach. Our style is to provide you an evaluation methodology that works, proven tools for achieving an "apples to apples" comparison, and sufficient guidance to keep the project on track and help you avoid making a costly mistake. Our philosophy is that you are better suited to make this decision than any consultant (and will be living with it for many years), and we will do everything we can to facilitate you to make the best possible decision for your organization.


• Contract Negotiations

We will help you secure a fair contract with your vendor(s) of choice that is modified to meet your specific needs. Based on experience gained from negotiating contracts with most of the leading healthcare systems vendors, we have great insight into what can be contractually achieved and what cannot. We will use that knowledge to help get you a performance based contract that spells out what you are really buying, establishes reasonable expectations for buyer and seller, and has fair pricing and payment terms. Our philosophy is that the contract is much more important than just a pricing/cost tool. It structures the entire business arrangement, and to protect you, we need to reach closure on a broad array of performance, implementation, technical, support and economic considerations. Typically, economic benefits from this consulting service alone far exceed the cost of using us for the full lifecycle of systems consulting services.


• Planning & Preparation for Systems Implementation

It is important to have a clear and well-documented plan for implementing your new system. At a minimum it needs to include a well thought out project team/organizational structure, project management guidelines, clear target dates with project milestones, activities and responsibilities. Ideally, this will be agreed upon with your vendor prior to your signing a contract. We will help you develop such a plan, as well as prepare your key project team members for the big implementation job ahead of them. We frequently conduct this project concurrent with contract negotiations.


• Systems Implementation Management Assistance

Given the cost, size and complexity of a major systems implementation. Implementation can be a risky effort, especially if your IT and/or key user staff lack the practical experience of having installed systems several times in their careers. We help you minimize that risk by providing proven system implementation tools and methodologies, and supplementing them with highly experienced consultants. Our style is to help orchestrate and manage your staff and resources to get the job done. We will "work through your people" to facilitate an on time/on budget implementation that satisfies your original reasons for buying the system. The level of our assistance will be tailored to your needs. Examples of different levels of assistance include: a small project to periodically monitor your progress and activity; a part time consultant to supplement your project manager; or a full time project manager to lead the effort. We can also provide application and technical specialists as needed.


• Information Systems Management

We can provide an IT Director or Chief Information Officer (CIO) to your organization on an interim basis. While serving in that capacity, we will address not only your day to day management needs, but will help identify specific areas where the management process needs improvement, as well as any other areas needing attention. Where appropriate, we will supplement our interim Director/CIO with other consultants to help implement improvements within the IT program.


• Electronic Health Records (EHR)

While we work in all major application areas of the health care enterprise (clinical, financial, managed care, departmental, administrative etc.) we have a special interest and experience in Electronic Health Records. Any of our general services can be applied to a specific EHR focused effort. For example services could include a general EHR education session, assessing the status of your current clinical system efforts, assessing your readiness for an EHR, developing a strategy and/or EHR migration path, or helping you evaluate/select EHR related products, as well as helping you in contract negotiations, process improvement or implementation efforts.

Part of our pragmatic approach is to avoid the confusing "alphabet soup" distinctions many like to make between the EHR, EMR, CPR, CPOE, AHR, AMR, advanced clinical systems etc. Instead, we simply focus on your requirements our understanding of the vendor marketplace to help you make good decisions.

We have helped dozens of providers with their EHR programs, helped several Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) with their DOQ-IT programs, delivered strategic assistance to several vendors, and helped several parties interested in RHIO's. Mike Cohen has co-authored (with Margret Amatayakul) the book Electronic Health Records: Strategies for Implementation and contributed to the book The No Hassle Guide to EHR Policies, both published by HCPro; has a monthly column entitled EHR Corner (also with Margret Amatayakul) published by Advance for Health Information Executives, and is a frequent speaker on EHR related topics at many industry seminars.



• HIPAA Assistance

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Administrative Simplification Section regulations is having a profound impact on the collection, storage and use of information in health care. Much more than a set of technology standards, achieving HIPAA compliance will require strong organizational effort, and significant changes in organizational culture and operations regarding the use, security and privacy of patient identifiable information. HIPAA should not be viewed solely as an "IT issue", but as a challenge (and opportunity) for the entire organization. We firmly believe that, if properly implemented, the transaction standards can produce huge savings and efficiencies for providers and health plans. While privacy and security requirements are burdensome, they are necessary to protect the health consumer and need not be too onerous or costly to comply with. They are also intended to be flexible and technical neutral - so there is no "one size fits all" solution. We can help you develop practical, efficient and effective programs to comply.

MRC CG, in partnership with several other highly experienced colleagues, including Margret\A Consulting LLC has already helped many providers, health plans and vendors prepare for HIPAA. We have authored books, maintained the highly regarded "HIPAA Corner" column in Advance for Health Information Executives, and contributed many speaking/educational programs at industry events. Between us we have decades of experience in HIPAA related areas of health care, active participation in standards setting groups, and a comprehensive set of HIPAA tools and methodologies. We have been closely tracking the regulations and offer a variety of assistance with transactions and code sets, privacy and security.

Examples of HIPAA specific services we offer for privacy, security and transactions include:


• Education and training programs for management, physicians, IT staff, and department heads
• Brief, high level assessment of your current organizational readiness/approach
• Comprehensive security risk analysis, including risk assessment, prioritization, security products/tools to consider acquiring, recommendations and cost approximations
• Detailed transactions data gap analysis to determine if you capture the data that will be needed to successfully use the covered transactions
• Policy and procedure review and development
• Business Partner and Trading Partner agreement negotiation assistance
• Remediation/compliance program development
• EDI implementation and testing
• Ongoing monitoring and compliance
• Overall project management
• Other projects tailored to your specific needs


Supplier Services

• Product Review & Competitive Analysis

Through our engagements with a variety of providers, we have developed a great depth and breadth of understanding for the many different IT products and vendors competing in the health care arena. We often conduct "apples to apples" comparisons of such products when we help our provider clients to evaluate and select new systems. We apply this knowledge and experience to provide health care IT suppliers an independent view and professional opinion of how their current or planned products may compete in the open market.


• Strategic & Tactical Planning

We will lead a thorough and efficient process aimed at helping you to clarify your business/product objectives, to understand your strategic options for moving forward, and to identify and prioritize the key projects needed to achieve your strategy. Based on those efforts we will then facilitate you to reach agreement on the strategy that best suits your organization. This is done within a framework of matching your core competencies and product strengths with market needs, direction and competition.


• Market Overview & Education Sessions

We will develop and deliver presentations targeted at specific areas of interest to Executive Management or specific disciplines within their companies. Examples of the type of education sessions we have conducted include: Healthcare Information Systems Market Overview; What's Really Happening with the Electronic Medical Record; HIPAA Compliance Overview and other areas of special interest.


• Due Diligence for Potential Mergers/Acquisitions

We will combine our domain expertise with our analytical and research skills to help potential buyers of companies to better understand the product and organization they are buying. We work with investment firms as well as directly with potential buyers to assist in such due diligence and research efforts.


• Miscellaneous Problem Solving and Assistance

We pride ourselves on the depth and breadth of our knowledge of the healthcare IT marketplace plus strong problem solving skills developed over more than two decades of health care consulting. We are adept at applying these to areas of special interest to our clients, such as specific problems, opportunities or trends in the market. We also conduct market research aimed at addressing your specific questions and issues as well as helping you examine new products and technology entering the marketplace.