This FAQ aims to shed light on common queries and highlight why a partnership with Xpio Health is a smart and strategic choice for your behavioral healthcare needs.
What does XPIO mean?
Most people think Xpio is an acronym. But in fact, it is a hybrid word, derived from the Latin “to improve” sharing the prefix with words like experience and exponential. So Xpio Health means “to improve health.”
What does Xpio Health do?
Xpio Health’s mission is to improve the health of organizations and the people they serve. We do that by helping our customers build the groundwork, capacity, infrastructure, and strategy that enables them to deliver quality healthcare services to improve the health of their communities.
Our consulting areas of focus are:
- Electronic health record procurement, implementation, and optimization
- Data compliance and security
- Data analytics, reporting, and visualization
- Healthcare technology strategy
How will an EHR benefit my organization?
Implementing an EHR is a crucial step in improving an organization’s operating environment, clinical service quality, data practices and systems infrastructure.
When fully and optimally utilized, EHRs can produce the following benefits:
- Improved clinical care quality
- Improved workflow efficiency
- Increased provider satisfaction
- Faster access to client information
- Optimized revenue cycle management
- Increased productivity
- A scalable technology infrastructure to support goals for expansion and growth
How do I choose an electronic health record?
When choosing an EHR it is crucial to identify your organization’s clinical, operational, billing, reporting, and regulatory requirements and evaluate EHR systems against your needs to arrive at the best choice.
Xpio Health’s EHR procurement process includes:
- Analyze workflows
- Document requirements
- Develop and release a request for proposal (RFP)
- Schedule system demonstrations focused on organizations’ workflows and requirements
- Conduct vendor reference checks
- Perform a complete vendor and system evaluation
- Select EHR
What are the differences between the available EHRs?
Most EHR platforms offer the same basic components that include admission, scheduling, clinical documentation, prescribing, billing, and reporting. Identifying the differences that matter is crucial when choosing a system.
Differences include:
- Performance of the system’s core components
- Some systems excel in user-friendly clinical documentation, though they might complicate the billing process.
- Others streamline billing but require more steps for patient admission.
- Evaluate all components based on your priorities and available resources to find the best fit.
- Cloud-based vs. locally hosted
- Today’s organizations predominantly choose cloud-based solutions for their flexibility and cost-effectiveness, though the preference for local servers persists for those seeking more control.
- User Interface Design
- The appeal of an interface is highly individual, varying from person to person.
- While numerous buttons and icons aid navigation, they also create a cluttered appearance.
- Most systems offer the flexibility to configure home screens to individual preferences.
- Ease of navigation
- Some system interfaces are more intuitive than others.
- Support and Assistance
- The availability of help desk services varies, with some providing round-the-clock support and others operating within specific hours.
- Additionally, the nature of support differs; some organizations offer direct assistance from live personnel, whereas others might initially route inquiries through automated chat functions.
- System Expertise
- Certain systems require specialized report-writing abilities for data extraction and reporting.
- Others require coding proficiency from developers to customize form functionalities.
What challenges should I expect in an EHR implementation?
- Staff resistance
- Allocation of adequate resources to the project
- Workflow concerns
- Cost / budgeting
- Decision to delay go live until the system is “perfect”
How long does it take to implement an EHR?
The timeframe for implementing an EHR system depends on numerous elements, such as the project scope, the timelines set by the vendor, and the organization’s efficiency in finishing assigned tasks. Generally, EHR implementations within the behavioral health sector take about 6 to 12 months, although projects with a smaller scope might be wrapped up within 4 to 5 months. Xpio Health advises engaging in a phase of pre-implementation planning. This crucial step provides ample time for making informed decisions about various aspects of your programs and services, as well as documentation and reporting processes, all before the vendor steps in.
How much does an EHR cost?
EHR systems vary widely with respect to cost. Cost is often associated with the platform on which the EHR runs, the number of features (“bells and whistles”) the system has, and the number of users. Many cloud-based systems offer a monthly or yearly subscription to use the EHR. This subscription is typically tied to a per-user-per-month pricing model. Some vendors provide a “base” EHR that offers only essential EHR functions, like billing, scheduling, and clinical notes, at a particular price point. You can purchase “add-on” features, such as e-prescribing, pre-populated templates, patient portals, voice dictation, electronic clinical decision-making, etc. These optional, modular features vary from vendor to vendor. Most vendors charge one-time implementation fees up front and then ongoing monthly or annual subscription or maintenance fees.
Are Xpio Health fees in addition to the EHR vendor implementation fees?
Yes. The services that Xpio Health provides are in addition to what the EHR vendor offers. We augment your internal resources to complete tasks on time. We also spend additional time digging into your specific workflow and operational needs to ensure these are addressed and configured in the system. Other Xpio focus areas include data migration, system testing, and end-user training planning beyond what the vendor offers.
What EHR does Xpio Health recommend?
Selecting an EHR should be based on the specific needs and goals of the organization. Xpio Health has experience and expertise in many EHR systems and does not endorse one EHR over another. Our objective is to understand an organization’s clinical, operational, regulatory, and budgetary needs to assist in finding the best fit-for-purpose solution. When selecting a new EHR, our customers seek our help with the crucial steps of documenting requirements, identifying and evaluating vendors/systems against requirements, and obtaining references from similar organizations using the specified systems.
What makes Xpio Health different from other consulting firms? Why should we choose you?
- We pay attention to details that others miss, and we continuously educate ourselves on available technology solutions.
- We care about the people being served and the people working in our customer organizations – we come from those organizations.
- We know behavioral health, compliance, and technology and are familiar with the challenges our customers experience.
- We continue to expand our knowledge and level of expertise with multiple technology solutions.
- We are determined to spend the necessary time to dig into customer needs and be experts in resolving problems with relevant technology.
- We assist organizations throughout the technology strategy continuum, including system procurement, implementation, ongoing support, system compliance and security, and data analytics.
What are common mistakes made in EHR implementations?
- Inadequate planning
- Insufficient communication with stakeholders about the project
- Not allocating adequate resources to the project
- Not building a team of superusers
- Not providing workflow-based end-user training
- Inadequate system testing
- Insufficient Go Live support resources
What does data compliance mean?
Data compliance is a formal governance structure to ensure an organization complies with laws, regulations, and standards around its data. The process governs the possession, organization, storage, and management of data to prevent it from loss, unauthorized access, or misuse. Legislation obligates health organizations to develop with a security strategy and implement technical and administrative measures to safeguard protected health information. The regulations for data compliance encourage an organization to wholly re-examine and improve its cybersecurity strategy.
Xpio Health assists organizations in assessing security risks and developing mitigation strategies.
How can I be sure sensitive data is protected?
Part of adopting an EHR is understanding the system’s capabilities for segmenting data, which allows for greater control by the organization concerning what information can be accessed by whom.
It is imperative to take actions that protect your data, including:
- Establish data governance policies and procedures
- Provide privacy and security training to all staff
- Control data access by creating EHR user roles and assigning privileges based on job responsibilities
- Complete a Security Risk Assessment
How can I better visualize my data?
Employing a “data first” strategy when configuring your EHR ensures you collect data in the proper format to allow reporting on your critical operational measures. Collecting data is only one piece of your information story. Data is useless unless you can access it. Extracting data from your EHR system into a visually compelling report or transforming it into dynamic visualizations facilitates effective decision-making. Some EHR vendors offer a business intelligence component that allows you to view your data in a graphical format. Other options include Microsoft Power BI, Amazon Web Services, and Tableau.
Xpio Health assists customers in extracting the most meaningful data from their EHRs, transforming it into logical measurements that accommodate organizational objectives, and loading it into easy-to-consume dashboards that provide insight into treatment outcomes, payment cycles, and operational processes.
How can I use my data in decision-making?
A crucial element of effective business strategy is data-driven decision-making, which includes configuring your EHR system to collect data based on your identified key performance indicators (KPIs) and transforming that data into actionable insights. Determine your organizational KPIs, ensure you’re collecting the relevant data, and extract and transform your data into interactive visualizations that illustrate your story as it evolves, helping you shift from reactive to proactive and prompting meaningful, data-driven decisions.
