EHR it can be done and Nurses are doing IT!

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

HIMSS and the Alliance for Nursing Informatics (ANI) presents a the first in a series of quarterly audio conferences for Nursing Informatics Professionals on May 11th. This first audio conference in the series will be presented by a nurse whose session at the 2005 Nursing Informatics Symposium in Dallas was a resounding success. If you missed it then, now is your time to hear from a nurse who was a key player in helping her organization implement an EHR and become a Davies Award winner!

** The 60-minute educational session will be followed by an update of new developments from the field & public policy arena.

May 11, 2005

The Nursing Experience in EHR Implementation: A Case Study of the Path to Achieving Successful Outcomes

2:00 - 3:30p.m. Eastern/1:00 - 2:30p.m. Central/12:00 - 1:30p.m. Mountain/11:00 - 12:30 Pacific

Speaker: Gayle Lykowski, RN, MBA, Director, Clinical Applications, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH

In implementing its EHR, Children's Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) set high goals to improve and support patient safety, improve access to patient information, make decision support available at the point of care, eliminate redundancy in data collection and to improve compliance with regulatory requirements. The speaker will discuss the approach her organization used in its EHR design and implementation, the challenges they faced, and the outcomes they achieved. She will describe outcomes in clinician satisfaction that improved when more time became available for direct patient care; improvements in efficiency relative to nursing assessment, pharmacy order turn-around time, radiology efficiency and user satisfaction; and she'll explain improvements in cost effectiveness through error prevention and charge capture.

> During this session, participants will:

Review the approach CCHMC used to implement an EHR

Identify barriers and the ways in which one hospital addressed those barriers to achieve successful implementation of an EHR system

Assess the improvements in quality, efficiency, and satisfaction that can be achieved with the EHR

Register Online at:

http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=e65fb09d-bb81-44e1-a80d-479c53c130b8

[Mijourney]

Rninformatics, tell me if the following is a normal impact or barrier. I was talking to a friend the other day and told her I was very interested in the informatics field. She said that where she works, there is a informatics nurse (I don't know the employer assigned term) that changes their EHR all the time. She in fact expressed annoyance with the nurse. Not having experience in the area, all I could tell her was that computerization of records was not a static process. Are upgrades to an EHR a random process or can there be a routine to it? Should the staff simply have an understanding that for process improvement changes have to be made in rapid, regular order for improved patient care? :)

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

Each institution/organization will have their own policies and procedures related to changes being made to the EHR. I can only speak for the one's that I have practiced in ....changes that will impact at the user and or patient care level are first communicated to the user community prior to being made. Complex change may even require that the users are retrained.

Are upgrades to an EHR a random process or can there be a routine to it?