If you work at a healthcare system, most likely you get your care there as well. As IT professionals we have an opportunity to be “not so secret shoppers”. In other words, if we tell the clinical and administrative 
staff we have contact with as a patient that we are in IT, we will probably get an earful – both good and bad.
I always make a point of being a not so secret shopper. I want to hear what our users think of the systems we provide and support – good or bad. If I hear about actionable items, I follow-up with the right people afterwards.
This week, I had the chance to be on the patient side of systems. Believe me, I would rather have not been. After a severe toothache all weekend, I called my dentist back home Monday morning. I was hoping to get a prescription for an antibiotic (assuming the pain was due to infection) and something for pain stronger than the over-the-counter ibuprofen and Tylenol I’d been taking. But their protocol was no prescribing unless they saw me. Being hundreds of miles away at my interim engagement, I said that didn’t work for me. So, what was I to do? They said to call my PCP (also hundreds of miles away) or go to an urgent care center.
So, Monday night, I headed off to the University of Vermont Medical Center Urgent Care. New patient check-in, registration, nurse triage and then to the exam room to wait for a physician to see me.
The wait was minimal at each step and everyone was extremely friendly. At registration I heard enthusiasm about the Epic system coming November 1st and that they would no longer have to use two different systems. The registration clerk said it will be a change and take time getting used to, but that having just one system would be so much better.
With the triage nurse, I realized I didn’t have my medication allergies stored as a note in on my iPhone as I thought I did. I rely on the fact that they are in my medical chart at my healthcare system back home.
In the exam room, we discussed my medication allergies again, but I still couldn’t remember all four of them. The physician said, let’s go to Care Everywhere and get them – now why hadn’t I thought of that with the triage nurse? The Epic Care Everywhere Network is extensive in the U.S. and internationally. Both my PCP back home and UVMHN are on Epic so it was going to be my first time as a patient benefiting from Care Everywhere. But the physician was unable to get to Care Everywhere for some reason. My IT colleagues followed up on this the next day after I shared my story. It turned out to be a user training issue.
Experiencing how your organization uses the systems you provide can be an eye opener. I encourage you to take the opportunities when you can to get feedback and understand how your systems work on the front lines.
And if you’re wondering…..yes, I got the prescriptions I needed (including an antibiotic I’m not allergic to) and my week has improved.
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Michael Watson, PMP, CSM on said:
It’s always an eye-opening experience for an IT person to receive care in the hospital environment. You often see what does or doesn’t work well in the clinical process and how IT systems affect that. Beyond IT, the patient experience is revealing. Many times I’ve thought that I had a much smoother path through the patient experience because I was familiar with how things work on the clinical side. I then wonder how the average patient manages to get through it without inside knowledge?
To this end, I would take IT staff on field trips to inpatient and ambulatory facilities to give them a look at how their work was being used. For IT people, typically insulated from the end user and process, it’s revealing and gives some context to their work. I recommend that all IT managers (development, rev cycle, domain, etc.) take their teams and a trusted guide out to see how their efforts support patient care.
Sue Schade on said:
Michael, all great points and practices! Thanks for sharing.