February 9, 2015 - The purpose behind Saratoga Hospital’s (Saratoga Springs, NY) “Mini Jam” meetings is simple — geographically-close MAGIC customers can convene at a central location to network, share ideas, solutions about common healthcare and industry issues, and receive updates on MEDITECH products, new functionality, and enhancements.
“There is a total of seven small MEDITECH community hospitals, including us, located in upstate New York and southern Vermont,” says MEDITECH NAC member Nancy Braaten, RN, nursing informatics at Saratoga. “Since there is a large number of hospitals in the surrounding area that run MEDITECH’s MAGIC platform, we knew we were in a unique situation — these small hospitals have many of the same needs and challenges that we do.”
There have been two Mini Jam meetings so far thanks to Braaten and a select group of dedicated nurses at Saratoga who implemented and organized the first Mini Jam meeting about a year and half ago. Before the first official meeting, Braaten asked clinical informaticists at each of the hospitals to provide a list of their top three MEDITECH issues to talk about. Some of the topics included the rollout of CPOE, how to increase physician utilization, Meaningful Use, Patient Portal, medication reconciliation process and flow, and the discharge routine.
At the first meeting, there was representation from each of the seven hospitals including two representatives from MEDITECH and 35 hospital staff members including 14 from Saratoga. In addition to an open discussion, MEDITECH reps gave an update on key areas of focus specific to MAGIC customers which included mobile rounding, Focus Groups, and Business and Clinical Analytics. The four hour meeting provided attendees the opportunity to share common practices, discuss specific applications and functionality components, and talk one-on-one and provide feedback to MEDITECH.
“General feedback from attendees was positive and folks thought the program was informative and useful. They also want more meetings in the future,” she says. “Based on everyone’s response, we decided to host these meetings on an ongoing basis. We are currently planning our next one for the Spring.”
Braaten says spearheading the Mini Jam program is not a difficult undertaking.
“It really didn’t take much work for what we got out of it, and for what we continue to get out of it. I’m extremely appreciative that there is an abundance of caring people in the area that want to do the right thing — the Mini Jam meetings have been a means to work with other MEDITECH organizations and achieve shared goals together.”