Aurora Clinical EMR is a medical software that provides health care professionals with tools to help them manage their patients. The system also offers tools to help them perform research.

To prepare for a clinical decision support (CDS) evaluation, MIT and J-PAL North America worked with Aurora to gain access to de-identified data from their electronic medical records (EMRs). This case study describes the research collaboration process.

Patient Demographics

Aurora Clinical EMR offers a wide range of patient demographics. These include age, gender, race, ethnicity, BMI, insurance status, comorbidities, and more. They can be used to help patients manage their condition and reduce costs.

The Aurora team worked with the MIT researchers to de-identify the data and merge it across tables. The process required a significant amount of time and effort from both teams.

To make the data usable without identifiers or dates, the MIT team provided pseudo code and template SAS code for the Aurora team to use. This enabled the Aurora analysts to verify that the merging and de-identification processes produced consistent results and accurate linkages between the data sets.

Using the patient-specific reference date, each time variable was converted into a number of days from that specific reference date. This enables researchers to determine how the sequence and time period of encounters changed over the study period. Additionally, it helps to ensure replicability of the data sets during analysis.

Clinical Documentation

Clinical documentation includes entries in an individual’s medical record that are authored by a health care provider or other healthcare professional. This documentation may include notes from face-to-face visits, reports from lab tests, and consultations with specialists.

In Aurora, health care providers are required to enter these entries in a patient’s electronic medical record. The entry of this information can help health care professionals to better understand the patient’s condition, as well as to provide evidence for insurance billing purposes.

As part of the research project, the MIT team spent time in-person with healthcare providers at Aurora to better understand the way they use the EMR system and how they interpreted the data entry fields. This allowed them to develop a greater understanding of the data and its definitions than could have been gained through reading the written documentation alone.

The research team also worked with the data analytics team at Aurora to better understand how the data was structured. This involved examining how the data was structured, identifying which tables and data sets were relevant to the research study, and creating queries to extract data from different tables and merge them. This process, in turn, required a significant amount of processing time by the Aurora analysts. The research team was able to compensate for this time by adequately budgeting for the analyst’s efforts and reimbursing them appropriately.

Medication Management

Aurora Clinical EMR offers a number of medication management capabilities, including automatic patient check-in, dose verification signatures, ID verification, and medication dispensing automation. These features can help improve patient safety and limit errors.

The SMART solution also supports methadone liquid and solid forms, including Suboxone, Subutex, Zubsolv, and generic buprenorphine/naloxone films and tablets. This helps reduce the risk of overdose and misuse of medication.

In addition to medication management, Aurora Clinical EMR provides an array of other tools to help manage a practice and ensure compliance with regulations. It also includes a billing system that allows patients to pay for services and submit claims.

Obtaining access to this data and making it usable for research in de-identifiable form was a significant undertaking by the MIT and Aurora teams. This required a lot of time and effort from analysts at both organizations, as well as trust between the teams.

Integrations with External Systems.

Integrating EMR systems with external systems is a crucial component of effective clinical operations. Integrations can improve data accuracy, improve reporting to regulatory authorities, and make billing compliance easier.

For instance, telehealth systems can integrate with a health system’s EMR to allow physicians to make virtual appointments right from the interface. This makes it easier to manage care coordination, reduces the time physicians spend completing documentation, and allows them to better understand patients’ health.

Aurora Clinical EMR supports a variety of integrations with external systems. These include labs, pharmacy management systems, and billing tools.

The integration process requires a thorough planning approach. This includes defining shared goals and identifying responsibilities. It also involves assessing workflows and making any necessary changes to ensure staff satisfaction.

Population Health Management

Aurora Clinical EMR supports a range of population health management capabilities. For example, it enables health systems to monitor the performance of a specific patient group for improved outcomes. For instance, a healthcare clinic that treats only employees and their families can chart data on trends among its base patients to improve its care plans.

In addition, it can also track the performance of specific providers within a health system for more efficient outcomes. For example, it can track the number of visits and visits per patient for a particular provider group to determine how effective they are at containing costs and delivering quality care.

Secure Messaging

The secure messaging capabilities of Aurora Clinical EMR enable medical professionals to share important health information with patients without risking a breach of e-PHI. This can lead to better patient satisfaction, a higher likelihood of complying with medical recommendations and lower risks of allegations of negligence. Azalea EHR is another best software you should check its features.

In addition to secure email communications Aurora offers mobile application that allows physicians to send messages between themselves their colleagues. This feature is useful when working together in an outpatient setting. where it can reduce the amount of time that they spend on phone calls.

For example, if an inpatient nurse calls and asks to speak with the hospitalist. The pager can automatically route that message to the right partner at shift change. The system can also be set up to reroute messages based on policies that are established.

E-Prescribing

E-prescribing is a key function of an electronic health record (EHR) and can be an integral part of medical practice. The software allows prescribers to electronically enter a prescription into the system and transmit it to the pharmacy. It can also be integrated with the patient’s medical record and office billing systems.

Several studies have shown that e-prescribing can significantly reduce error rates and improve prescribing efficiency.

Treatment Plans

Aurora Clinical EMR is a powerful tool for managing medical records and providing quality care. This system is used by large hospitals and healthcare providers to streamline their processes and improve patient outcomes.

For example, it can identify patients at high risk for unnecessary hospitalization. It also enables care managers to engage their patients, teaching them health maintenance skills like weighing themselves daily.

In addition, it can help track patient progress toward a desired outcome, such as a reduced rate of readmission. This is important because it can reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of life for patients.