| Category | Question/Description | Pilot Response |
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| Background | High-level overview about the piloting organization(s).
| UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) is organized into four major operating units: Provider Services, which includes a comprehensive array of tertiary, community, and regional hospitals; specialty service lines, such as transplantation, women's health, behavioral health, pediatrics, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, and rehabilitation; in-home care and retirement living options; contract services, including pharmacy and clinical laboratories; and nearly 3,400 employed physicians and associated practices. Insurance Services, the largest medical and behavioral health service insurer in western Pennsylvania, offers health insurance to companies and their employees, as well as recipients of government programs such as Medicare and Medical Assistance; integrated workers' compensation and disability services; and coverage for behavioral health services to Medical Assistance beneficiaries in 35 Pennsylvania counties. UPMC International provides hands-on health care and management services with partners around the world. UPMC Enterprises functions as the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC. |
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| Describe each participating organization role in the EMDI pilot. | This pilot involved one outpatient clinic which provides assistive technology, such as rehabilitative devices and equipment, to individuals with disabilities. |
| Describe what encouraged you to participate in the EMDI program. | We have had an interest in improving efficiency and paperless processes for documentation and order transmittal. |
Business Workflow/Requirements
| What are some benefits to your customers from implementing EMDI? | One benefit in implementing EMDI is that it reduced the wait times to receive DME. |
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| Detailed description of how the use case(s) helped the piloting participants meet their goal | We used use cases to simulate our workflows and build an electronic transmission process that uses our EMR. |
Describe any pain points that you’ve incurred before piloting and how electronic interoperability assisted in resolving them | We worked with one vendor in this project. A pain point is that different workflows would be required once new vendors are added. |
Detailed description of the implementation of the use case(s) | By implementing the EMDI ordering use cases, we were able to simulate the documentation and order transmission for a wheelchair from the clinic to the DME vendor. The DME vendor then added and transmitted documentation and the order to the MACs for preauthorization. |
Detailed description of the pilot participants workflow before and after the EMDI use case(s)
| The workflow process was improved when the electronic signature process added, but otherwise remained the same because it was successful |
| Technical Specifications | Detailed description of why you’ve chose certain industry standards for piloting the use case(s) | This was based on the expertise of our esMD and EMDI experts and internal experts familiar with electronic document and order transmission processes. |
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Describe the level of effort used for the infrastructure when using the document transfer vendor or describe how you had to improve your infrastructure to align with EMDI | We had to check that each step in the process was not only successful, but also followed compliance standards. |
| Describe the lessons learned while implementing the technical standards | One of our lessons learned is that there is a need for teamwork from a wide variety of experts, both internal and external to the organization, which also requires good communication. |
| Recommendation | Note your experience with CMS and Scope Infotech under the EMDI program | My experience was excellent. They are great communicators and very supportive of our ideas to use these processes to improve care and create innovative solutions. |
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