Nursing

How to successfully roll out your EHR

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, November 29, 2007

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When switching from the paper route to electronic health records (EHR), there are several proven strategies that your facility can adapt. When implementing an EHR in your hospital, consider the following tips:

  • Consider using only one vendor. Stick with one vendor as much as possible. No matter which way you choose, having a good integration strategy is important.
  • Train for patient-friendly use. Some nurses and physicians will readily embrace the EHR system, taking it into the patient's room and using the computer as part of patient care. Other users will struggle. Provide early training or role playing to make employees more comfortable with what to expect technically and clinically.
  • Build in required quality measures for organizations such as CMS and The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO). Early on, facilities should list required information and how they are going to get it.
  • Identify "before and after" EHR-related improvement measurements that are easy to document and review. Try to choose metrics that are easy to document and review.
  • Expect it to be hard. It is a big change.

To get more information, go to Electronic Health Records Briefing (EHRB). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire November issue of EHRB. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of EHRB have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their November issue.



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