Integration...... The Final Frontier!

I am often approached with the question what best practices work well in the FQHC market? I always tell folks that if you have seen one community health center….. you’ve seen one community health center. Each organization is as unique as the next. However, some standard best practices and key concepts can be followed to ensure you get the most out of Dentrix Enterprise.

1.    Integration is key:

a.    Communicating a shared vision – Integration is paramount and organizations leadership need to empower this vision. Working in silos is no longer an option.

b.    Understanding both languages – Primary Care and Dental providers speak different languages. Team members will need to develop a new language, and it will be important to learn and begin to incorporate the ideals of working together to improve patient care. And most importantly, Medical Directors and Dental Directors need to listen to one another and work towards a single, unified front.

c.    Providing integrated solutions – Organizations must work to develop innovative solutions that work in both primary and dental care settings to maximize returns and minimize duplicative functions. Be sure to budget for and invest in integration tools.

d.    Mitigating conflict – Conflicts between dental providers, CEO’s, and Organizational Leadership must be avoided and dental leadership should be able to moderate open discussions between stakeholders.

e.    Building Trust – Understanding the “Big Picture” while the Meaningful Use incentives are certainly important, let’s not forget the other core reasons for implementing an EDR which include patient safety and improving the oral health care of the underserved communities we serve.

2.    Types of common Integration interface options:

One of the most common interface languages used today is Health Level 7 or HL-7.  Implementing an HL-7 interface between your Medical EHR and Dentrix Enterprise is a key feature that should be budgeted for and implemented prior to going live on Dentrix Enterprise. One of the true benefits of implementing Enterprise Dentrix vs. Core Dentrix is the ability for the software to have HL-7 messages flow between disparate systems. i.e. Medical EHR and Electronic Dental Record (EDR).  The following segments of HL-7 are intricate to minimize duplicative data entry and to stream line processes. Some of the more common segments of HL-7 are:

a.    ADT- (Admit Discharge Transfer) - Typically refers to patient demographics such as Name, Date of Birth, Social Security Number, Address, and Phone Number.

b.    DFT- (Detailed Financial Transaction) - Typically refers to a financial transaction that is sent to a billing system and is used for patient accounting purposes. This message might include things like ancillary charges or patient deposits.

c.    SIU- (Scheduling Information Unsolicited) - Typically refers to messages used to communicate information about a patient’s appointment from two disparate scheduling systems or clinic’s practice management system.

d.    ORU- (Observation Result) - Typically refers to messages such as clinical lab results, imaging study reports, EKG pulmonary function study results and patient condition i.e. diagnosis history, problem list, vital signs, allergies, clinical notes, etc.

These interface engines are typical between the various medical EHR systems and Dentrix Enterprise. Additional costs will be incurred to implement these segments of integration and most often are uni-directional. So budget for these features and consider them a “Must Have”.

Another, type of interface that many software vendors are exploring is called Application Programming Interface or (API) for short. This allows the communication between various software components within an application. For example, wouldn’t it be efficient if the Dentist or Dental Assistant can update the patient’s allegies and current medications from within Dentrix Enterprise.  With a simple click on the Dentrix Enterprise data entry screen the user is taken into the corresponding component of your medical EHR maintaining one point of prescription entry, one allergy list and one complete medication list.

Stay tuned for next month’s post where we will dive into best practices and standards utilizing Dentrix Enterprise.