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Specialty practices: How a tailored system avoids disruption

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In my previous blog, Specialty Practices and the Need for a Mold-Breaking EHR, I discussed three critical challenges that specialty practices face regularly. Now, I’d like to explore how ensuring a tailored system within multi-site, multi-specialty organizations can reduce avoidable (and costly) disruptions.

The primary advantage of multi-specialty practices is their agility. They can provide comprehensive, coordinated care through a team of medical providers across many clinical disciplines. Patients benefit from seamless collaboration on treatment plans, leading to more accurate diagnoses and effective therapies. This holistic approach ensures that every aspect of a patient’s health is considered—from preventive care to complex chronic disease management.

However, despite these benefits, multi-specialty practices face significant operational challenges, particularly when their EHRs are not optimized for the specific workflows of each specialty. Each specialty brings unique nuances to standard workflows, documentation requirements and standards. This diversity can make it difficult to implement a one-size-fits-all solution. The risk is that when each specialist compromises their ideal workflows to fit a common methodology, it may lead to a loss of efficiency and effectiveness in patient care. For example, nephrology and ophthalmology each require specialized tools such as dialysis management for nephrologists and graphical eye diagrams for ophthalmologists.

An effective EHR must support the ability to approach the patient through each specialty lens, accommodating the unique expertise, testing tools and nuances of care each specialty provides. For example, your EHR should support customizable note templates, flowsheets and role-based preferences, enabling specialized workflows to coexist within a unified system. This means that surgeons could have assistants manage refills while pediatricians retain direct control of prescribing and documentation, based on their preferences. One differentiator includes the ability to customize workflows, templates and even order sets to support specific specialties without sacrificing the overall system’s efficiency.

For instance, Altera Digital Health’s TouchWorks® EHR enables flexible order compendium management, order groups with single-click ordering and role-specific workflows for clinical staff. This adaptability means that a multi-specialty clinic can thrive without forcing specialists to conform to a generalized, inefficient model. This technology includes the ability to support interoperability through standards like FHIR and integration with insurance systems for seamless data exchange across platforms. This helps ensure that while specialists receive the tailored experience they need, the practice remains connected to the broader healthcare ecosystem.

The evolving future of AI in specialty practices

Quilt graphicAs healthcare systems evolve, integrating AI into multi-specialty practices is becoming more relevant for improving efficiency and precision. AI-trained agents tailored to specific specialties can provide more relevant insights and recommendations, minimizing risks like inaccuracies or irrelevant suggestions that often accompany general-use AI models. In the realm of specialty medicine, expertise is very specific and deep, with complex and unique language and terminology. This creates a requirement for deep training and knowledge base reference that is catered uniquely to the specialty. This ensures each specialist has the right support to provide excellent care without disruption. Much like we see with software, there is a need for a flexible model that integrates both general-purpose tools and a multitude of specialty-trained tools and agents that can support the needs of specialists.

In multi-specialty settings, a “one size fits all” AI approach can lead to imprecise patient care. Instead, EHR systems should incorporate AI frameworks that respect the unique nuances of each specialty. By customizing AI training to consider the depth of clinical domain knowledge needed in different specialties, you can mitigate risks and empower clinicians with reliable and contextually aware data.

Looking toward the future

Altera is committed to integrating advanced AI functionalities into our EHR platforms. By doing so, we aim to provide our clients with cutting-edge tools that not only cater to diverse specialty needs but also anticipate future healthcare challenges, ensuring continuous improvement in patient care delivery. As we continue to improve and refine our solutions, we strive to provide our clients with the tools to manage the complexity and diversity inherent in multi-specialty practices, empowering providers to deliver the best possible care without compromising their unique workflows or the business’ operational needs. By enabling clinicians and transforming care organizations, we will continue to drive improved outcomes together, bringing next-level healthcare within reach.

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