MEDITECH 6.0 First Impressions

I had the occasion at the end of November of last year to attend a MUSE event at Doylestown Hospital where they discussed their conversion from Magic to MEDITECH’s Client/Server 6.0 (Focus). Doylestown uses our NetDelivery Application (they were customers in MAGIC and use it now in C/S and Focus).

The following were my observation and notes from their conversion that I thought I’d share with you:

• MEDITECH currently has HIM, ED, OM, EMR, PCS and POM available in 6.0.  The remainder of the conversion is to C/S 5.6.
• Doylestown was 1st conversion site live with Focus, West Georgia was 1st new install.
• Doylestown is 200 beds – went from 18 to 62 servers, fully redundant data sites connected via fiber.
• Wayne Memorial, Beverly, and Woman’s are all conversions under way.  White River is a new install under way.
• Somewhere between 13 and 21 sites have signed for 6.0 at this time.
• Apparently Interior health is negotiating to be beta for 6.1 conversion  (add B/AR, ABS, ADM, ORM)
• 6.0 includes web-based PDA support (windows mobile and iPhone). (not POM, but esig and view)
• Although live with some applications, ED is going live in 3rd qtr and POM in 1st qtr.
• Printing (and printer) setup major setup problem (has spooler) – “all printing requires mouse click”
• Mnemonics go away -  they are there, but full names are displayed and primary lookups.
• User and providers dictionaries merged into one dictionary
• Scripting is issue – no calls to field, must move via keystrokes only.  They have had some problems with scripting programs
• No report writer for 6.0 at this time, but is promised by MT. 
• Problems with notifications – send to printer, not to device or individual.
• Presenting/attending were people from MEDITECH (Ev Hazel and Lori Ebbs), several representatives from JJ/Perot (Fitz did a hardware overview), Representative from HP, Infologic (?), Consultant from Beacon.
• Challenges identified:  moving away from MOX (user training and what to do with files), printing, reports (NPR reports converted, but DPM’s may have changed).

Overall MEDITECH was very easy to work with and responded to their needs prior to signing and during process.

If you are converting to MEDITECH 6.0, post a comment on what you think of the new version and what your requirements are for new products and features that can support the new version. Also, if you have ideas for our existing products and their support of 6.0, let us know.

Posted on February 18th, 2009 by Arthur in MEDITECH | Permalink | 5 Comments »
Tags: HCIS, hospital information system, meditech 6.0