It's always fun to take a quick look back at the prior year and see what was accomplished, but my favorite thing is looking ahead to the future, and prioritizing what we can do to help organizations meet their 2018 goals.

If you’re a clinician, you know that closed loop medication administration can enhance patient safety and improve efficiencies throughout the medication management process — from the time a physician orders a prescription, to the time a nurse administers the medication and documents it in the patient’s eMAR. Maybe you’ve implemented CPOE and bedside medication verification to close the loop on oral medications?

But what about IV meds? Exactly what does closed loop IV medication administration look like?

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"After years of frustrations, user wish-list turns positive." The headline from this year's EHR Satisfaction Survey suggests improvements in attitude and satisfaction toward hospital EHRs, yet the underlying challenges for CIOs and clinicians still haven't changed very much.

I recently attended the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC) annual conference in Indianapolis. I had the honor of presenting Iatric Systems thoughts on how to increase HIE utilization with our very disruptive FlexButton^TM technology.

In Healthcare, as in life, the one constant on which we can all rely is change. While change usually brings better outcomes and moves us forward, the process of change can be painful. There are some, however, who come out of major change with a better-than-ever reputation and trusted partnerships with unlikely colleagues. How do they do it? How do they make it look so easy?

The fact of today's world is that patient's medical records do not reside in one system. I don't know anyone today that has only ever been to one doctor, it just doesn't happen. So, it's no wonder that we have trouble accessing a patient's full medical record, and verifying their identity across or even within systems.

Without conjuring up dramatic images of a zombie apocalypse, the healthcare IT industry finds itself in yet another unprecedented time period. In this post-EHR era (as some call it) we have largely achieved the goal of digitizing health records. According to adoption statistics at health.gov, 96% of hospitals had certified EHR technology by the end of 2015. Since the implementation frenzy first brought about by Meaningful Use, EHR sales have slowed down — apart from the steady change fueled by the ongoing consolidation of hospital systems.

Interoperability remains a top challenge for hospitals — so much so that it was cited in the HealthcareIT News 2016 EHR Satisfaction Survey as a top issue. The lack of interoperability causes hospitals to be inefficient and causes duplicate work for clinicians. It may be time to start looking outside of the EHR to make interoperability between systems happen.

International MUSE is right around the corner, May 30 – June 2. MUSE provides excellent opportunities to network with peers and share information about what’s new in the MEDITECH community. This year, Smart Pump EHR Integration is new, and ed session #1117 offers nurse informaticists, pharmacists, IT analysts, and C-level hospital decision makers the chance to learn about this new and exciting technology. So mark your calendar and plan to attend “Connect Your Smart Pumps to MEDITECH,” which will be presented by Union Hospital and Iatric Systems on Thursday, June 1^st at 9:00 a.m.