1

I N D U S T R Y

H E A L T H C A R E

C U S T O M E R S T O R Y

T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y M E D I C A L G R O U P

Tulane University Medical Group Keeps High-Stakes Projects on Track With Redbooth

E R I C G A L L A G H E R

Director of Clinical Services and Payer Contracting

Tulane University Medical Group uses Redbooth to

manage implementing electronic medical records (and

collecting millions in associated federal incentives).

The Organization: Tulane University Medical Group

is the clinical practice group for Tulane University

School of Medicine. TUMG is dedicated to the

successful practice of quality medicine as part of an

academic health center. With over 400 physician

members with a diverse range of expertise,

academic pursuits, and clinical interests, TUMG’s

goal is to create a smoothly running and collegial

practice environment that allows its physicians

to focus on the quality of care and teaching. This

approach strives to allow TUMG to shine in the

local, regional, and national markets, benefiting both

patients and the institution.

The Context: Healthcare is going through big

changes, pushed by both the federal government

and private health insurers to emphasize quality

over quantity. For example, government and

private payers want to make it more profitable

to provide preventative care and follow up with

hospital patients after discharge than to repeatedly

hospitalize a patient for the same condition. Federal

programs have specifically promoted the adoption

of EMR software, the online exchange of health data,

and the collection of health quality metrics as part of

this shift.

The Challenge: To qualify for federal incentives

worth about $1.5 million per year under a program

known as Meaningful Use, TUMG must implement its

EMR system, train clinicians in its use, and meet an

increasingly complex set of reporting requirements

to prove the software is in fact being used in a

meaningful way to deliver better and more cost-

effective healthcare.

Redbooth’s Role: When Eric Gallagher, Director

of Clinical Services and Payer Contracting, joined

TUMG in 2012, the EMR rollout across more than

40 clinics was being managed with email and

spreadsheets. Redbooth gave him a powerful,

streamlined way to manage the process and boost

accountability across a blended team of employees,

vendors, and contractors. Today, Redbooth supports

cross-functional efforts to train clinicians on the EMR

system, gather and report health quality metrics, and

manage public health programs for the New Orleans

community.

C U S T O M E R S T O R Y

T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y M E D I C A L G R O U P

I N D U S T R Y

H E A L T H C A R E

2

IN THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO: HOW TO GET THINGS RIGHT,

prominent physician/author Atul Gawande argued that one of the best

ways to make medicine better is to organize it better.

Too many medical errors are the result of doctors practicing the art

of medicine by instinct rather than by following rigorously structured

procedures, he argued. Conversely, something as simple as a checklist of

steps to be performed before surgery (enforced, for example, by nurses

empowered to remind doctors to wash their hands) pays off with a dramatic

improvement in outcomes: healthier patients, not to mention fewer

malpractice suits.

Redbooth customer Tulane University Medical Group is finding that there

is a similar payoff to be realized in the business of medicine. Redbooth’s

project workspaces first proved their value in guiding the implementation

of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software. More recently, Redbooth

has been used by TUMG in other initiatives such as a culinary medicine

program and managing contracts with insurance companies. Overall,

Tulane currently has more than 30 active project workspaces in Redbooth,

many including a mix of internal and external users. But it all began with

the rollout of an EMR – the system for recording physician notes, managing

patient medical history, and handling processes like electronic order entry

of prescriptions.

Used properly, EMR software organizes medical procedures and warns of

problems like dangerous interactions between medications. But before

those benefits can be realized, the software must be configured correctly

and doctors and nurses must be properly trained in its use. Meeting federal

standards for Meaningful Use of the software creates a whole other project

– gathering and organizing the metrics defined by the federal government

and addressing any shortfalls with training and other remedial steps. A

failure at any link in that chain could result in federal funds slipping away.

From Email To Organized

Eric Gallagher, Director of Clinical Services and Payer Contracting at Tulane

Medical Group, said that when he joined the organization in 2012, EMR

projects were being managed by email and spreadsheets — tools he knew

would be inadequate as the complexity of the federal Meaningful Use

requirements grew.

At TUMG, Redbooth’s

workspaces first proved

their value in guiding

the implementation

of Electronic Medical

Records software.

C U S T O M E R S T O R Y

T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y M E D I C A L G R O U P

I N D U S T R Y

H E A L T H C A R E

3

“It meant that getting to compliance and to achieving the incentive

payments was much more difficult. It was a lot more difficult to keep

track of everything,” he said. Over the past few years, the federal

reimbursements have added up to about $3.5 million, he said, so it’s a

serious source of revenue.

Gallagher’s team works with a cloud version of the eClinicalWorks EMR

certified to meet federal standards for health data security. While they

do not have to manage in-house servers and databases for the EMR, his

group works with the vendor, resolves issues with the software, trains

personnel, and ensures adoption. He found it frustrating to have to

search through tangled email threads to research the history of a project

or understand who was supposed to be responsible for getting specific

work done and when. Having worked with project collaboration software

in previous information technology and consulting roles, Gallagher went

looking for something better.

Focusing On The Workspace

Gallagher’s team reviewed several other web based tools for organizing

work and also evaluated enterprise social networks. They picked

Redbooth as the one that supported multiple modes of collaboration, while

keeping tools to get work done front and center.

Thanks to Redbooth, his team now has HD Meetings web and video

conferencing available within the same user interface they use to assign

and track work. This has turned out to be very convenient, particularly for

screen sharing in the context of training and troubleshooting, Gallagher

said. “It’s easier to show somebody something than to talk about it.”

Launching online meetings from within Redbooth feels natural because

Redbooth is also where team members go to record or retrieve notes or

assign tasks that come out of a meeting, he said. “Having one less place to

have to go and to launch a conferencing line is always welcome.”

Productivity Payoff

Thanks to Redbooth, Gallagher said, “Our team has become much more

mobile and flexible. We have fewer meetings and those difficult-to-follow

email threads have become much shorter.” Transparency and accountability

are also much improved, not only for employees but also for work assigned

to vendors and contractors who are invited into the workspace.

“Our team has become

much more mobile and

flexible. We have fewer

meetings and those

difficult-to-follow email

threads have become

much shorter.”

C U S T O M E R S T O R Y

T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y M E D I C A L G R O U P

I N D U S T R Y

H E A L T H C A R E

4

While some people were slow to give up their email and spreadsheet

habits in favor of managing work in Redbooth, “now it’s the norm, at least

for our team,” Gallagher said. “Just earlier today I was in a meeting and

we were talking about an upgrade that we’re doing on our EMR, and

somebody was asking, ‘I know we talked about this around June or July,

and I can probably find that email,’ but then somebody went to Redbooth,

searched for the word ‘customizations,’ and pulled up the task right away.

So immediately we found the information in context.

“It’s also cultural,” he added. “We’re the team that trains clinicians on

becoming more innovative and using advanced technology to improve the

delivery of healthcare, so it’s important culturally for us to practice what we

preach and be on the cutting edge of ways for us to do our job.”

The productivity impact varies between teams and individuals, but “for

some people, I think you could say it made them 100% more productive,”

Gallagher said.

The greater organization his team achieved with Redbooth came along just

in time, as the federal government continued to ratchet up the Meaningful

Use requirements, he said.

Fortunately, federal authorities telegraphed their intentions enough that

Gallagher’s team could anticipate they would need a better project and

process management system. “We knew that we needed something more

robust if we were going to be successful as the requirements got more

difficult,” he said.

Putting Data To Work

You might think that the EMR software itself would handle compliance

reporting. After all, the software is explicitly certified to meet the

requirements of the Meaningful Use program. The EMR system does in

fact produce reports on compliance with government-defined criteria,

Gallagher said. However, that is not the end of the story. “A report could tell

us that Dr. Smith is not compliant in three objectives,” he explained. “But we

would then need to translate that into multiple tasks to address the areas

of non-compliance.” With Redbooth, his team is able to better organize its

approach to training, support, and education.

In addition, there is a multi-step internal and external process for

analyzing and reporting on healthcare quality data. To qualify for federal

“We’re the team that

trains clinicians

on becoming more

innovative, so it’s

important for us to

practice what we

preach and be on the

cutting edge.”

C U S T O M E R S T O R Y

T U L A N E U N I V E R S I T Y M E D I C A L G R O U P

I N D U S T R Y

H E A L T H C A R E

5

incentives, TUMG must file detailed reports with the Centers for Medicare

and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Meaningful Use incentives

program. Tulane has yet another set of processes for gathering and

reporting data related to its internal quality controls.

“We needed to be able to go through the data and create tasks that say,

‘You need to go train this doctor on e-prescribing or on ensuring that

they’re verifying their medication allergies or go figure out where the

problem lies in this clinic’s workflow or configuration,’” Gallagher said.

In other words, whatever the clinical objective was for a specific metric,

TUMG should be able to match any shortfall in performance to a plan for

improvement, he said.

Using Redbooth hashtags, the team can easily classify information by

clinic or add labels for clinical and training issues. That simplifies tracking

and reporting “from the 30,000-foot level,” Gallagher added. In addition to

addressing issues with individual clinicians, the team watches for patterns

where a large number of clinicians, specific specialties, or specific clinics

are failing to meet a specific objective. That in turn might lead to identifying

a systemic issue with training or clinical processes, he said.

It is an honor for Redbooth to be a behind-the-scenes player in such

an important process. The projects Tulane University Medical Group is

organizing in Redbooth are not only bringing in needed dollars from

federal programs but helping TUMG meet the ultimate goal of better, more

cost-effective healthcare and healthier communities.

About Redbooth, Inc.Redbooth is the award-winning platform that empowers teams and companies to collaborate,

communicate in real time, and achieve breakthrough productivity. Redbooth is used by more

than 6,000 companies across the globe to transform the way they work, including Al Jazeera,

App Annie, Deutsche Telekom, eBay, Harvard University, Nvidia, the Red Cross, ReMax, Spotify,

Thomson Reuters, Volkswagen Audi, Warner Brothers and Western Digital. Founded in Barcelona

in 2008, the company is privately held and headquartered in Redwood City, California.

www.redbooth.com | 1-800-733-1190 or 1-650-241-1425

“For some people, I

think you could say it

made them 100% more

productive.”