298 Section 5 IN-UM Electronic Health Record Preparation for an Electronic Heal
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Question
298 Section 5 IN-UM Electronic Health Record Preparation for an Electronic Heal An EHR is scheduled for implementation at Tres Rios Hospital in 3 years. The hospital is b conduct the initial planning. They want to ensure that users are prepared for the chan will bring to the facility, As you would expect, not all of the staff and medical staff are exci implementation of the EHR. ginning to I. What change in management issues should be addressed? What can you do to help prepare the medical staff and employees for the new system?Explanation / Answer
1. What change in management issues should be addressed?
The value of Electronic Health Records (EHR) seems obvious to most of us. With our vast progress in technology, it seems strange that manual health care records are not a thing of the very distant past. However, to implement Electronic Health Records, an organization must apply a change management strategy. That is the issue! Change is not easy. And our natural reaction to change is resistance.
Because of the nature of the business, most hospital cultures do not support organizational change. Hospital employees tend towards being reactive to constant change. Hospitals typically have two leaders; an administrative leader to run the operation and a medical doctor in charge of the physicians and clinicians. With the two leaders having very different concerns, there may not be a shared vision for the organization. This lack of shared vision would inhibit change.
The most common barriers to change in the healthcare industry:
Cultural complacency – we have always done it this way.
Resistance – we have to learn a new technology. As we may be techno phobic, this is outside our comfort zone. Some people do prefer manual systems to computer systems.
Lack of communication – we aren’t able to keep up with all the change as we are always understaffed.
Lack of alignment and accountability
Passive and absent leadership – they figure they can delegate their role as sponsor
Overloaded workforce – we don’t have time for one more thing to learn
Lack of control plans to measure and sustain results – it is easy enough to use the old process even after implementing the new process and tool
Specific barriers to Electronic Health Records:
Cost – adoption and implementation costs, ongoing maintenance costs, loss of revenue associated with temporary loss of productivity.
To create a change campaign around implementing an EHR, we need to answer a few key questions for the people who have to change:
Why are we doing this? What is the business benefit? This will allow clinicians to access the right patient information in a timely manner, wherever the patient is. This will reduce medical errors through better access to patient data and error prevention alerts.
Why do we need to do this now? What are the consequences of not doing this? Paper systems are causing wrongful diagnosis and can even lead to deaths. These systems are prone to error and delay the healing process. Paper records have been destroyed in floods, fires and other natural disasters. Electronic systems can build in backup and disaster recovery.
What is in it for me? As change leaders, we must discuss the positive impact on hospital employees by showing how it will improve their job. This will allow individuals to spend more time on valuable tasks (such as decision making) versus tedious, labor intensive tasks required of paper systems.
The executives of the organization need to understand the return on investment from the costly purchase, implementation and maintenance of an EHR system. The system improves practice efficiency and streamlines processes. These systems can result in cost avoidance through alerts needed to ensure compliance with regulations and can reduce duplication of testing.
The goal of change management is to help individuals transition through change so that the organization can bring about impactful business benefit. If change leaders convey these messages frequently to the employees, allow two way conversations to gauge and resolve individual concerns and ensure people are well trained on the new system, an EHR initiative is much more likely to succeed.
2. What can you do to help prepare the medical staff and employees for the new system?
Medical staff are sometimes resistant to begin using EHRs, especially when changing from a paper system for the first time, due to a belief that the switch will waste time and interrupt their workflow. And when medical staff aren’t properly trained in the use of EHR software, this can actually be the case.
Electronic health records offer a wide range of proven benefits, even if not all medical staff agree that implementing an EHR has improved their practice. This doesn’t reflect an inherent flaw in EHRs, but instead signals that your staff is lacking the tools and resources to understand and effectively use the EHR before going live.
One of the most common oversights in EHR implementation is that medical staff aren’t adequately trained on use of the technology. In this post, I’ll cover some considerations in training before going live with your EHR that can also help your practice successfully achieve Meaningful Use.
Understanding your training needs
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