Q&A with Dr. Harm Scherpbier Meet Harm J. Scherpbier, MD. Harm is Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Main Line Health in suburban Philadelphia. He is responsible for the implementation of healthcare information systems and the electronic patient record for doctors, nurses and other clinicians throughout the health system. His focus is on increasing patient safety, achieving quality of care, and reducing waste through innovative IT solutions.
Harm J. Scherpbier, MD
Vice President and Chief Medical Officer
Main Line Health
A: Yes, absolutely. It allows us to break outside of the walls of our health system and connect with the physicians in our community and improve the continuum of care. The stimulus bill (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) has been one of the factors that has helped physicians to start installing EMRs. I can tell by the number of emails from physicians requesting to get connected.Q: Has the MobileMD connection made it easier for physicians to work with Main Line Health?
A: From my perspective, it has made Main Line Health easier to work with because of the way our process works, whether a physician has an EMR or will want to have one. Our system works with a variety of EMRs. This gives us great flexibility in terms of the EMRs we can connect to.
Q: Would you recommend the MobileMD connection to other physicians?
A: Absolutely, I make MobileMD one of my key talking points in our area. I say, “When you’re ready, let me know so we can connect you in order to reduce the number of faxes and the amount of paperwork that goes back and forth.” Many of the physicians who have been hooked up like it because it makes their EMR more complete and usable. They want more. MobileMD gives us the way to send labs, radiology reports and transcriptions. The next thing is that doctors can start sending orders electronically. Right now, we have one- way traffic and soon we will move into two-way traffic.
Q: What's your history been with MobileMD?
A: The first connection was in 2008. And since then, we've been adding physicians. Seven practices are up and running, ranging from one physician to 25 physicians, and 14 more practices are in the process of connecting. The "pipeline" of practices wanting to get connected is growing fast. Many of these practices were already underway when the stimulus plan came through, but the stimulus plan is certainly adding fuel to the fire.
Q: What are a few of the clinical benefits?
A: I think there are both clinical benefits and efficiency/management benefits and they go hand-in-hand. The data comes back electronically to a doctor's EMR, and that makes it more accurate and faster and with less hassle. The information just shows up on the screen. One of the large physician groups we connected to asked us to turn off all the faxes. I think the fax machine is a tool of the past – and all communication is moving toward direct, system-to-system data interchange.
An important opportunity for healthcare information exchanges is medication reconciliation. Today that’s all done manually when patients tell the doctor what medications they're on. Once we connect electronically, we would capture a patient's medications and not have to re-enter it manually – which avoids errors and saves a lot of time.
Q: How is MobileMD HIE clinically relevant?
A: They are highly experienced and are completely up-to-date on the EMR and how to deal with it. I’m excited about the current ability to send out labs and reports electronically – but the real opportunity is two-way connections, totally automating the communication between the practices and the health system: orders, referrals, medication and allergy lists, and CCD documents (Continuity of Care Documents). That’s where the stimulus bill is driving us, and we count on MobileMD to be our partner in implementing this level of interchange.