Question

1. This case involves a healthcare system consisting of five clinics serving nearly 2 million residents in a large metropolitan area and treating over 500,000 patients annually. In preparation for the implementation of an EHR system for the five clinics, the healthcare system implemented an electronic document/content management (ED/CM) system to handle the imaging, indexing, and storage of selected hard copy documents from active patient paper medical records so that in the future, to support continuity of care needs, key documents would be retrievable through the EHR system. However, the healthcare system lacked the level of internal IT and health information services staff resources required to manage the implementation of hardware/software and to handle the actual paper conversion process, so these aspects of the project were outsourced. The outsourced company installed hardware and software, redesigned workflow in the health information services department, collaborated with the health information management professionals to redesign standardized patient record forms, and worked with IT staff to develop interfaces that would allow for scanned images to be fed into the EHR system. The outsourced company also managed the preparation, scanning, indexing and quality control activities associated with the actual paper conversion process.

Questions

1. As the healthcare system prepares to select an outsource company as its vendor for this project, what types of information should it give to and gather from each vendor under consideration?
2. What are the potential benefits a healthcare system could gain from implementing a document imaging and management project prior to implementing an EHR system?

Answer 1

Some of the information which has to be given to the vendor are

• The project duration for completion
• The reliability and trustworthiness of the work
• Vendors can get support from the healthcare system as per neeed and necessity at any time
• The cost or the expense of the project
• The end result should be staff friendly and easy to use
• There should be high security system in it so that hacking of patient information can be avoided

The type of information which has to be gathered are

• The vebdors experience in doing the projects
• The reliability and success rate of the work done by the vendors

The potential benefits the healthcare system could gain by implementing document imaging and management project prior to implement ing EHR are

• It can be user friendly when the actual EHR is implemented
• Can help to identify any errors and it can be rectified earlier
• An exposure and knowledge will be gained by the staffs to use it confidently.