informatics in nursing

Many of the hospitals are in the process of switching to a complete EMR system. However, I noticed there are so many glitches during the switching process. This is causing a lot of duplication in documentation, whether it is Dr's orders or request for blood work. Approximately how long do it take for a hospital to go fully LIVE with an EMR system?:

When we 'went live' at out hospital, we pretty much fully went live with it. The only thing we did not have was CPOE (I've since left that job, but they have added CPOE--it was probably 6 mos after the original go live).

Out of curiosity, what dulications are taking place?

An essential part of the process of switching or implementing a new system is 'keeping the lights on'..... e.g., making sure that nothing interferes with normal operational functions until the new system is stabilized. This includes not only the patient care/documentation stuff, but also the underlying flow of information throughout the network to support things like quality and billing.

Therefore an unfortunate part of any implementation is the need to maintain duplicate processes until the new one is absolutely good to go. If everything is working well, it may only take a week or two but I have been involved with projects that required parallel processes for over 6 months. So - the answer to the original question would be "it depends".

In the case of CPOE, we are dealing with major culture as well as behavioral change so it may take longer than any previous initiative. We're expecting physicians to adopt new behaviors & work directly with computer systems (actual fingers on keyboards & mice) rather than having someone do it for them..... ahem. What can I say?

Hang in there. I have often said that nurses should be awarded some sort of combat insignia each time we have to go through a major implementation of some sort.... getting a visual here? It would be easy to determine why a nurse was so permanently cranky... all we'd have to do is look at the chest/arm, etc. and see how many campaigns he/she had survived and all would be forgiven (or at least understood). Just imagine the war stories "well, that's nothing -- let me tell you about the Pyxis upgrade of '07"

Duplications such as blood work. When the Dr. order blood work for the patient, it shows up in multiples in the order section of the patient's EMR. There are times a patient is transferred to another unit, but the orders are still present on the patient's chart from the prvious unit.