Question

For D.W. McMillan Memorial Hospital, a 49-bed community hospital located in Brewton, Alabama, implementing an EHR was not without its hurdles. However, the organization successfully on boarded a new system and is attesting for MU stage 2 during this fiscal year. Following are several key strategies that contributed to the hospital’s successful EHR implementation.

D.W. McMillan was an early adopter of EHR technology among smaller rural and critical access hospitals, starting implementation in October 2012. The hospital began the journey months before by pulling together a management team, which had previously led a project for installing a bar code medication administration system. The group discussed the need for an EHR, what it would take to get one up and running and whether the organization would be able to make a large-scale implementation work. Making sure that organization leaders were all on the same page was key, because without everyone’s full support the process could quickly fall apart.

From this group, an IT steering committee was formed and tasked with the job of guiding the organization through the EHR adoption process. Team members included the medical-surgical intensive care nurse manager, director of nursing, CFO, quality assurance manager, lab manager and revenue cycle analyst. To optimize the group’s performance, different team members began to specialize in various aspects of the system. For instance, the quality assurance manager became an expert in how to use the technology, particularly in relation to bar-coded medication. The medical-surgical intensive care nurse manager focused on informatics, including creating predefined order groups and seeking ways to use the technology to accomplish organization goals. This strategy enabled the team to effectively use their limited resources to become experts in all parts of the EHR system.

In selecting an EHR vendor, the steering committee looked for one that would best meet the needs of physicians and nurses, finally choosing a system that offered easy-to-navigate screens that mirrored paper-based processes. The idea was to make the transition to electronic as seamless as possible for staff. For various workflows, such as pneumonia care, chest pain guidelines and restraint orders, the team examined existing paper forms and attempted to reflect the same approach in the electronic version. This strategy allowed physicians and nurses to recognize the forms faster and more easily learn how to use the program.

Questions:

1. Briefly discuss 3 reasons why this project was implemented by the hospital.

2. Identify and discuss 2 major entities that could have been a resource to the hospital during this entire project.

3. Identify and discuss the most critical phase of an EHR implementation, and support your claim with 3 reasons.

4. According to this project, what could have gone wrong during the implementation? (Explain 3)

5. Explain 3 reasons why the selection of an EHR vendor was important in this project.

Answer 1

1. Briefly discuss 3 reasons why this project was implemented by the hospital.

According to the above data D.W. McMillan Memorial Hospital, a 49-bed community hospital located in Brewton, Alabama, has taken up a project to implement HER system in there setup

The major factors for adaptation of this project were

a. installing a bar code medication administration system

b. creating predefined order groups and

c. seeking ways to use the technology to accomplish organization goals

d. to meet the needs of physicians and nurses

2. Identify and discuss 2 major entities that could have been a resource to the hospital during this entire project.

a. The hospital’s existing team of organisational leaders and

b. Paper workflows

Played an important role as resources to the hospital during the entire project

3. Identify and discuss the most critical phase of an EHR implementation, and support your claim with 3 reasons.

The most critical phase of EHR implementation was to make the transition to electronic as seamless as possible for staff. For this the factors important to be considered were

a. Understanding the needs of physicians and nurses

b. Creating preferred order groups that would help the focused informatics to bar code medications

c. Examination of existing paper forms and attempted to reflect the same approach in the electronic version.

4. According to this project, what could have gone wrong during the implementation? (Explain 3)

The project could have failed in its implementation depending upon several facts

a. The project was being implemented in hospital located in rural area and the accessibility was in question

b. If the implementation of EHR included entirely new concept and did not reflect the existing forms and procedures would have led to failure in implementation

c. The co-ordination with the needs of the hospital was necessary if not it would have gone wrong entirely to implement EHR

5. Explain 3 reasons why the selection of an EHR vendor was important in this project.

The main concepts that was looked into selecting EHR vendor was

a. Considering needs of physicians and nurses

b. Choosing a system that offered easy-to-navigate screens that mirrored paper-based processes

c. Considering existing paper forms and replicating them so that it makes the process easy and faster