Since health care organizations deal with the constantly increasing amount of data and information, health care leaders have understood that digitalization and automation of data is necessary for improving the organizational workflow, increasing efficiency, and reducing costs. Therefore, the interviewed health care leader has decided to implement a technology of electronic health record (EHR) to meet the modern requirements of health professionals, clients, and the whole health industry. The paper examines the process of selecting, planning for, and implementing a new information technology by the interviewed health care leader as well as analyzes the leader’s mistakes and potential ways for improvement of the technology’s implementation.  

Before implementing EHR technology, the health care leader went through the process of irregular planning. He has planned to implement EHR so that health-related data could be more effectively retrieved in EHR than in paper records. In particular, he supposed that unlike paper records, in which information is entered and stored in a semi-structured format, electronic health records are standardized and patient-centric. Also, EHR technology contains correct, reliable, and verifiable data. However, in order to meet these objectives, the EHR system must be accurately developed. According to Marcinko & Hetico (2007), EHR is “a real-time patient health record with access to evidence-based decision support tools that can be used to aid clinicians in decision-making”. Hereby, EHR includes data about the patient created by the clinicians based on direct responses from patients and other staff who provides care services to them.

By choosing EHR technology, the health care leader has tried to take into consideration the needs of most health care stakeholders. First, electronic health records are used for further analysis so that the clinicians could make correct diagnoses, provide accurate medications and procedures, thus, preventing fatal medical errors. Second, health record data is used by managers in statistical assessment to improve the care quality, resource management, and outcome reporting of the organization. At last, if necessary, health records enable public health intervention for the patients’ security. Apart from this, EHR may be also used as a reliable source when informing patients about their health status and choices, answering patients’ questions, and supporting patient care. Additionally, by using the EHR system, the patients can arrange and control their own health-related information in real time.

To enable all the stakeholders successfully use EHR, the meaning and valuable characteristics of electronic records must be adequately and equally understood and decoded by both users and creators of data (Zeng, 2008). However, because the health care organization has stored patient-based clinical data in different information systems, the format and peculiarities of data vary in different information systems. Consequently, such a lack of data uniformity and integrity has resulted in difficulties with data comparison, errors in data implementation, and misinterpretations. Examples of inconsistencies met throughout information systems include inconsistent naming conventions, inconsistent definitions, different field types and size for the same date element. They worsen the quality of health care services and result in other unintended consequences.

The leader has understood that in order to prevent mistakes and discrepancies, all the important attributes of data must be clearly defined. Hereby, he has chosen a data dictionary as a tool that can help the health care organization to ensure data quality, accuracy, and reliability. Data dictionary provides descriptions of names, definitions, and attributes of data elements that must be followed across information systems (Marcinko & Hetico, 2007). Eventually, while providing information about the structure and context of data, such dictionaries are a useful guide for a consistent collection of accurate and reliable data within health information systems. However, in order to resolve the issue in the long run, the leader should choose taking a more strategic decision in planning and implementing the EHR system.

When planning the introduction of information system, the health care leader has to create a research team that includes leaders from the organizational departments, administrators, and other stakeholders. By performing certain preliminary steps, the team ensures that all the current and future issues and needs of the organization are involved into the planning process. First, it is important to determine the organizational development stage and understand its main goals. Next, the group should research workflow, infrastructure, and operations within the organization in order to understand how it provides heath care services to its clients and consider its improvement opportunities. Based on the research conducted, the work team can identify the criteria for selecting the proper electronic health record system that could best meet not only the current organizational needs but also future requirements of the health care industry. For example, while selecting and assessing the potential IS, such aspects as a number of staff, the outsourced functions, existing systems and applications, the cost of the new system, as well as the cost of training must be taken into consideration.

Once the core goals and requirements that should be met by the new IS are determined, the research team identifies the potential key categories of IS functionalities such as health data, patient support, order management, decision support, public health management, and reporting. After that, the organization can submit the request for a proposal, thus informing the potential vendors about the products needed. At last, the organisation has to compare and assess the demonstrations of products provided by different vendors based on the initial selection criteria as well as organizational goals, and choose the most suitable one.

Thus, the leader has to go through a specific process of planning, identifying the criteria for selection, assessing, and evaluating a health care system before implementing EHR at the organization. Following a coercive and integral process of selecting IS will surely limit the number of issues that can arise during practising the technology of EHR. The opinion of all the stakeholders will assist in choosing the correct IS to meet the organizational goals.

Author : Luna Griffin Views : 372

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