Advocating, Leading, Caring: Epiphany Observes National Nurses Week 2012

During the week of May 6-12, Epiphany Cardiography would like to join the American Nurses Association (ANA) and many other organizations across the United States in observance of National Nurses Week 2012. This year’s theme is “Nurses: Advocating, Leading, Caring.” Please join us in recognition of our nearly 3.1 million registered nurses, as they dedicate themselves year round to the promotion and maintenance of our nation’s health.
 

Why Observe National Nurses Week?

• Raise public awareness about the tremendous role that nurses play in the maintenance and improvement of American healthcare. We all know that nurses work diligently to provide us with superior care in hospitals, schools, and other healthcare facilities, but many may not see the important contributions nurses make as volunteers, researchers, educators, and advocates for a better healthcare system.
• Nurses make up the largest of all healthcare professions and the profession is growing, in both number and in its capacity for leadership and responsibility as changes to the healthcare system allow nurses the opportunity to utilize more of their education and training than ever before.
• Nurses are the most trusted professionals in America according to a national Gallup poll. The 2011 poll marks the twelfth time in thirteen years that nurses have topped the list of trustworthy and ethical professionals.
   

How to Observe National Nurses Week

• Know important dates associated with National Nurses Week to plan events accordingly, publish appropriate materials, or recognize individuals in a personal setting.
  • National Nurses Week begins on May 6^th of every year and culminates on May 12^th, coinciding with Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
  • May 8^th of every year is recognized as National Student Nurses Day.
  • The Wednesday within National Nurses Week is recognized as National School Nurses Day.
• Plan an event in your community or workplace. Some possibilities include:
• Host a celebration of current or retired nurses in your community.
• Organize/sponsor a community wide contest that focuses on recognition of a nurse or nurses within the community.
• Hold a fundraiser and donate the funds to a local charity in the name of a local nurse, group of nurses, or National Nurse Week.
• Spread the word via press release, blog, advertisement, or any way that can make more people aware of National Nurse Week.
• Show your appreciation by personally thanking nurses for all that they do. No matter who it may be, just let them know that you appreciate them. They will likely appreciate the recognition.

At Epiphany Cardio, we understand the important role that nurses play in our nation’s healthcare system and we want to take this opportunity to thank them for their service. We would consider it a great success if our own products could do a fraction of the good for healthcare that nurses around the country and the world do every day. We thank you again, happy National Nurses Week!

Intelligent Serial Comparison Module Available in Cardio Server

Epiphany’s Cardio Server offers an option called “Intelligent Serial Comparison.” The option provides comparative statements to the reading physician on changes between the current ECG and the most-recent, previous ECG.

Epiphany’s Intelligent Serial Comparison is designed to work with all cardiographs and with all migrated data. It compares the current ECG’s computer interpretation to the previous ECG’s confirmed physician interpretation. If the most recent previous ECG has not been confirmed by a physician, Intelligent Serial Comparison will use the cardiograph’s interpretation of the previous ECG for comparison. Intelligent Serial Comparison is configurable, and can be set-up based on the preferences of the facility.

Some examples of the configuration options include:

• Facilities can set statements that will appear based on the statement being “no longer present” or “now present.”
  • Example: A physician notices that a patient’s current ECG shows atrial fibrillation and previous ECG showed a sinus rhythm. If the system is configured to show “now present” and “no longer present,” Intelligent Serial Comparison would note in the current ECG, “Atrial Fibrillation now present.” It could also say “Sinus Rhythm no longer present.”
    
    
• Statements can be set to “new only,” which will identify statements only if it is new from the previous ECG.
  • If a facility chooses to set a statement this way, it helps physicians see the major changes from the previous to the next ECG more easily, since only new abnormalities would appear in the serial comparison.
  • If “Left Axis Deviation” is set to “New Only” and it was not present in the previous ECG but is present in the current, the Serial Comparison would read, “Left Axis Deviation is now present.”
     

    
    
    

• Facilities can choose in Intelligent Serial Comparison to set statements to “Always,” which will comment on the phrase whether it is in the previous or the current ECG.
  • “Myocardial Infarction” can be set so that it always produces a statement since it is such a significant event and requires immediate attention.
  • If “Myocardial Infarction” was set this way, the Serial Comparison will either say it is “now present,” “no longer present,” or “still present.”
     

• Also, a facility can set statements to “Standard” so that when a phrase occurs in both the previous tracing and the current tracing, it is not noted.
  • A facility may set statements such as sinus rhythm to “standard” because it is a normal rhythm that does not require immediate treatment and they do not need each consecutive ECG to read “Sinus Rhythm is still present.” If, however, the next ECG shows a different rhythm, Intelligent Serial Comparison will note “Sinus Rhythm no longer present.”

Intelligent Serial Comparison FAQ’s:

• What happens if there are no previous ECGs? Intelligent Serial Comparison will note, “No previous tracing available for comparison.”
• What happens if all phrases between the current and previous are identical? Serial Comparison will note, “No significant changes since previous tracing (Date/Time Stamp).”
• Can Epiphany’s Intelligent Serial Comparison be turned on for some physicians and off for others? No, it is a system-wide setting. If Intelligent Serial Comparison is added to your Cardio Server system it will be applied to all ECGs.
• Can Intelligent Serial Comparison recognize abbreviations? Yes, common abbreviations such as RBBB and LVH can be used by physicians and recognized by Intelligent Serial Comparison.

Intelligent Serial Comparison may be added to your current Cardio Server system at any time. For more information about Cardio Server’s Intelligent Serial Comparison option, contact your sales representative.

Interoperability is Essential in Healthcare IT

It’s no secret the healthcare field is constantly changing. In fact, the rate of change is likely to accelerate when meaningful use stage 2 (expected to be implemented in 2013) and stage 3 (expected to be implemented in 2015) come into full play. Facilities and practitioners who regard themselves as discrete entities are going to find themselves forced to cooperate and communicate. Without advance preparation, the change may prove to be a nightmare.

Healthcare IT departments are gathering all available data on interoperability between and among devices, computerized patient records, and diagnostic testing. Meaningful use of this technology promotes the flow of information among healthcare facilities that may use different computer systems. Developing and implementing seamless interfaces is central to successful collaboration while safeguarding patients’ well-being.

Computer systems and diagnostic equipment, for example, are going to require a high degree of interoperability. Suppose a patient undergoes testing and the results are converted into a computerized image at his local clinic. The designated diagnostician is located on the opposite side of the country in a facility using an entirely different computer system. Well-designed interfaces facilitate the transmission of the patient’s data from one coast the other. The diagnostician receives the test results or images, arrives at a course of treatment, and relays his or her instructions back to the patient’s local healthcare practitioner the same day.

Telemedicine strategies like this have been widely used in remote and medically underserved communities for years. Their meaningful use will become more apparent as better cost effectiveness and efficiency acquire more importance. American society has always been mobile, its people often relocating several times during their lives. In addition to furniture, appliances, and the family dog, medical records have been carried from one city hospital to another. Unfortunately, boxes and envelopes sometimes go missing. When a health emergency arises, redundant medical testing is required and an extensive medical profile has to be rebuilt. The solution is national healthcare IT integration allowing a nearly instantaneous transfer of patient records from one health system to another.

Healthcare IT interoperability isn’t about technology ultimately. It is really about helping healthcare professionals record and maintain their patients’ data, aiding doctors in requesting tests and interpreting results, promoting accurate billing in the business office, and tabulating demographic information for federal funding entities. The various pieces of the puzzle need to fit together and talk to one another if high-quality patient care is to be achieved.

 

Epiphany Cardio Wants You to “Follow Your Heart” This February

This February, in observance of the American Heart Association’s “American Heart Month,” Epiphany Cardio wants to encourage you to “follow your heart.” We want you to personally join the fight against heart disease by maintaining an active awareness of cardiovascular health and following the path to a heart-healthy life. So, how can you “follow your heart?” Here are some tips:
 

Follow the Facts

Obtaining and maintaining awareness about heart disease helps keep you conscious of the importance of cardiovascular health. The facts below should get you thinking about just how serious the topic is.

• In America, heart disease, including stroke, is the number one cause of death for both men and women.
• One out of every three deaths in America is from heart disease and stroke. This comes out to about 2,200 deaths per day. 
• 71 million Americans have some form of heart disease.
   

Follow Your Risk

Understanding the magnitude of the issue is important, but alone it is not enough. Identifying which risks apply to you personally is a crucial step towards achieving optimal cardiovascular well-being. Check the following list. If any of the following applies to you, you are at increased risk for heart disease.

• You are a male 45 or older
• You are a female 55 or older
• You have a history of heart disease in your family
• You have high blood pressure OR high blood cholesterol
• You have diabetes
• You are overweight
• You are physically inactive
• You smoke
• You are constantly under stress
   

Follow-Up With Action

Understanding the scope of heart disease and knowing which risk factors pertain to you are two integral steps towards cardiovascular health, but they are useless if they don’t lead you to action. Taking appropriate action against any of the risk factors above can reduce your risk of heart disease or even reverse damage to the heart. Even in cases where the factors are beyond your control, like those concerning age, gender, and heredity, taking any of the following actions can help minimize your risk.

• Quit Smoking: The Surgeon General has called smoking "the leading preventable cause of disease and deaths in the United States." Quit now and start decreasing your risk of heart disease immediately.
• Maintain a Healthy Weight: Don’t just lose weight, keep it off and greatly reduce your risk of heart disease.
• Exercise on a Regular Basis: 20 to 60 minutes per day regularly, three to five times per week.
• Eat Healthy: Lean meats, low-fat dairy products, and foods that are low in cholesterol, added salts, fats or sugars.
• Treat Existing Health Conditions: If you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, get regular check-ups and follow your doctor’s instructions. 
   

At Epiphany Cardio, it’s our business to help you “follow your heart” with our products and services. Please, this February, help us help you by starting down a life-long path to cardiovascular health by utilizing the tips above.  Also, feel free to help us participate in American Heart Month by passing these tips along to your loved ones.

What can you expect from Epiphany’s implementation process?

When dealing with many software and service vendors in the healthcare industry, it is natural to ask, “What can I expect from the Project Management Team?” The Epiphany implementation team strives to be customer-focused and to deliver a quality product to your facility. To meet this goal we have several ways to support you. A typical project with our implementation team and your resources usually takes 12 to 18 weeks. We assign a skilled Project Manager, technical/HL7 resources and a Clinical Training Specialist to each project. With these three resources, we are able to provide quality guidance throughout the process and post go-live.

We work closely with your project and clinical department leaders to properly identify the current workflow and desired future workflow. By conducting several calls and product web sessions we will guide you through the process. We also work closely with your interface resources, PACS administrators, and/or IT personnel to achieve project completion. One of the reasons you may have selected Epiphany is to enhance your facility’s clinical workflow for your technicians, physicians and administrators. We are committed to achieving these goals with every facility.

A typical project will include:

• Bi-weekly status calls with alternate weeks fortesting/configurationmodifications
• Device configurations
• HL7 recommendations
• Remote testing support
• Experienced Clinical Training Specialist assistance with workflow needs, remote and onsite training, and go-live needs
• Basecamp project plan access (Basecamp is a web-based project management application tool that allows Project Managers to view and manage implementation tasks, deadlines, and upcoming events associated with the project)
• Skilled project guidance for each timeline

Before you look at purchasing any system we encourage you to ask how the implementation will work. If you would like more information on Epiphany implementations please let your sales representative know or contact the implementation team directly at 804.744.8931.

 

Implementation of Cardio Server: Paper-Based versus Digital Migration

Whether your hospital or clinic has been managing digital diagnostic test results for years, or you are just now thinking of going digital with an ECG Management System, Epiphany has a process for implementing Cardio Server to suit your needs.

Paper-Based:

If your institution is currently storing diagnostic test results in a patient folder or scanning them directly into your EMR without an electronic signature, consider Epiphany’s PDF Naming Wizard.

This feature, which was a customer’s idea originally that we then implemented, offers a suite of workflow productivity tools associated with scanning in paper reports. With Epiphany’s Naming Wizard you can:

• Import and categorize PDF studies for a variety of different diagnostic test results including ECG data

• Electronically import and assign patient demographic information via ADT or an orders feed

• Assign studies to a physician or physician group

• Access studies from virtually anywhere using a standard web browser

• Compare new studies to previously captured patient studies including ECGs

• Enable physicians to view and add interpretations and electronically sign a report prior to sending the result to your EMR

• Reporting capabilities for quality assurance and process improvement

Epiphany works with you to ensure that this process is accurate and organized. If your hospital does not want to scan in old studies with the PDF Naming Wizard, your physicians can simply view the new digital study on Cardio Server and compare it to the previous, paper study.

Digital ECG Migration:

For hospitals with an existing ECG management system, we can digitally migrate your legacy ECG data into Cardio Server. Epiphany extracts ECGs from the source ECG management system, processes the data, then loads processed ECGs into Cardio Server making it available for visual comparison and Epiphany’s Intelligent Serial Comparison. 

ECG comparison is important because it helps show the reading physician how an ECG study has changed from the previous one. Most Epiphany customers that had already owned an ECG management system request a migration, since the ECG data is already digital.

For more information on implementation for a paper-based or digital migration of ECG data, leave a comment below and your question will be answered promptly. 

Epiphany Cardio’s Customer Advocacy Program (CAP)

Whether you are considering Epiphany or you are a current customer of ours, you may ask yourself, “What support can I expect to receive from Epiphany after my Cardio Server go-live?” Of course we have 24/7 technical support for the customers, but we also want to proactively reach out to you to make sure all needs are being met. Our goal is to make sure you are completely satisfied and to provide a consistent way for Epiphany to receive your feedback.

Epiphany launched the Customer Advocacy Program (CAP) to answer this very need. To better serve our customers we want to ensure they have access to a Clinical Specialist who can help answer workflow questions or general end user concerns. A common workflow question we hear is "I would like to set up my remote pediatric cardiologists in Cardio Server so I don't have to fax to them anymore. They dislike the poor quality of the faxed tracings. Can you help me with this?" Periodically throughout the year, your Clinical Specialist will call you to answer questions like this and ensure you have everything you need from Epiphany.  

Your Epiphany CAP resource will:

• Review your service history

• Inquire whether your system is functioning as desired

• Ask if you are experiencing any workflow problems we may address

• Introduce new product modules for the current system

• Introduce you to useful tools at epiphanycardio.com

• Schedule web-based refresher training or help with new employees

• Assist in running administrative reports

• Answer physician questions or concerns

• Address any enhancement requests 

Epiphany’s continued success is fueled by our commitment to exceptional customer service. CAP has allowed Epiphany to get feedback from our customers and be proactive for ongoing product improvement.

      

Pictured above are (from left) Pat White and Vickie Carlson, two of Epiphany's CAP Representatives. 

 

Epiphany Cardio Continues to Grow

In the past few months, Epiphany Cardio has added some dynamic new members to our team. We’d like to introduce you to our new faces:

Brian Claxton:

Brian Claxton is our Regional Sales Specialist for the Western region. Based in Denver, Colorado, he has over 30 years of cardiology and healthcare IT sales with companies including Quinton/Cardiac Science and Philips Healthcare. He is excited to utilize his clinical and IT background to help customers improve efficiencies in treating patients and achieving improved healthcare standards. While not on the road, Brian enjoys climbing the highest peaks in Colorado and competing in bicycle races.

 

 

Felicia Cooper:

Meet our new software technician, Felicia Cooper. Before joining the Epiphany Team, she worked at Misys and Allscripts supporting EMR and Interface. She has over twenty years of Clinical Support experience. 

She was born on Labor Day, and is the youngest of 14 children (9 brothers and 4 sisters). She moved to North Carolina eight years ago from New York, but still has a New York accent. When asked how she feels about joining Epiphany, She says, “I look forward to getting my training wheels off and becoming a valuable asset to the team.”

 

Kathy Riley:

Kathy Riley is our Regional Sales Specialist for the Midwest region. She is based in Wisconsin and has sold Management Systems for Mortara Instrument, Marquette/GE and software for Philips Healthcare. She is also a former Respiratory Therapist. She’s anxious and excited to share with others the benefits of Epiphany’s Cardio Server solution for diagnostic test results. Kathy also has a Wisconsin accent.

 

 

Taylor Pike:

Taylor Pike is our new Regional Sales Specialist for the MidAtlantic region, and he’s based in Charlotte, NC. Before joining Epiphany, Taylor spent over six years in the Air Force, honorably discharged and recognized as a combat veteran. He came to us with over two years of experience as a manufacturer’s sales representative who sold Epiphany's product. When asked what he thinks about his new position here, Taylor says, “Epiphany is a company I love because of the folks involved. The leaders operate with excellence and integrity and putting the customer first. Those characteristics trickle down to the others and it's infectious.”

  

 

Greg Wagner: 

Greg Wagner has joined us as the Regional Sales Specialist for the Northeast Region. Greg has been working in medical sales for over three years throughout the Northeast. He represented and sold Epiphany’s product before joining us as well. Originally from Connecticut, he obtained degrees at the University of Colorado in marketing and finance and pursued skiing. When not working hard for Epiphany, Greg can be found surfing with friends or playing soccer around Boston, MA, where he currently resides. 

 

On behalf of the Epiphany Team, we'd like to welcome new team members. We look forward to a long and successful journey ahead.

 

 

Customer Resolves Workflow Challenge with Cardio Server on an iPhone from Church

Nicole Horve, Supervisor of Cardiovascular Services at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Illinois recently relayed this success story to Epiphany Cardio.

While in church on a Sunday, Nicole received a call from the reading cardiologist stating that an ECG he had confirmed would not come out of the list. Logging into the hospital’s Cardio Server from her iPhone, Nicole found that the ECG had become un-linked from its order. She re-linked the ECG to its order, verified its promotion to the confirmed queue, and then called the cardiologist to let him know he could proceed with his interpretation and confirmation. She solved the problem and satisfied the physician’s request without having to leave church and go back to the hospital. All actions were performed in a matter of minutes.

Epiphany’s Cardio Server is a pure-web, browser-based application, meaning no special software is required to view ECGs or perform administrative functions. With proper security permissions from the Information Technology Department, physicians can use iPhones and other smart devices to visualize acute ECGs as they are notified of them. Beyond this important clinical use, having the power of the iPhone and Epiphany’s Cardio Server creates a facile way of performing system administration from any location that has cell service.

 

Cardio Server Changed Workflow for Physicians at Northeast Georgia Medical Center

Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC) in Gainesville, Georgia, is a 557-bed hospital northeast of Atlanta. HealthGrades® rated NGMC number one in overall cardiac care for the entire state of Georgia, and in the top 5% in the nation, for the last six years in a row (2006 – 2011).
 

NGMC performs ~60,000 ECGs per year. Like many hospitals with that volume, it was not uncommon for ECGs to remain unconfirmed for extended periods of time as physicians read on paper in the Cardiology Department.

With the installation of Epiphany’s Cardio Server at NGMC, physicians are now able to view ECGs immediately after they are acquired with the previous ECG available on the same screen. They can view these studies in the same high quality just as if they had the original in their hands. The physicians can see these studies from any PC in the hospital or from their offices and homes; they can see them on their iPhones, their iPads, or their Droid phones. Cardio Server also tracks the number of studies they read for accurate reimbursement from the hospital.

In summary, installing Cardio Server at NGMC:

• Significantly reduced the amount of time it took to access an ECG from the time it was captured until it was viewable
  by a physician;

• Provides the previous ECG, when available, for comparative statement to be included in the interpretation;

• Allowed the organization to automatically bill for the procedure when the study was confirmed (i.e., no more missed charges);

• Prioritized viewing STAT ECGs immediately after they are performed from any PC, resulting in quick determination of severity of tracing;

• Gave the physicians the ability to read more studies in a shorter amount of time by not having to report to the ECG department and sift through a stack of papers; and

• Enabled multiple physicians to read at one time from various locations.