Link: Electronic health records: Difficult task or a pipedream?
In an article on CNNMoney.com, the author provides some analysis on the efforts to implement EHRs in hospitals and provider offices. Some of the points made in the article about the difficulty of the implementation process are:
- Costs can be overwhelming
- Adoption by staff may be slow, and there can be unique implementation issues by location.
- Hospitals desiring to integrate an EHR with ambulatory care offices may involve thousands of physicians and even hundreds of thousands of patients which causes the implementation process to be slow.
- Paper processes, protocols, etc. must be migrated to the computer platform, often requiring conversion from "rich text" to discrete "data fields."
- Ensuring compliance with HITECH/HIPAA privacy and security rules requires decisions to be made by facilities and providers that result in creation of legal documents/agreements. (If you're having trouble with this, go visit The Digital Business Law Group's HIPAA services.)
To summarize, installing the software is the "easy part."
Implementing processes, protocols, standards that enable EHR "meaningful use" is the "difficult part." It is a Project Management Wicked Problem. As a former IT person, I have three (3) recommendations that might help people/organizations get grounded before starting:
- Develop your "As-Is" picture. Knowing your current processes, protocols, tools, standards, physicians, and staff mix are a way to understand the 30K foot picture. Start from the top, and drill down.
- Develop the "To-Be" picture. Knowing the goal and the "end game" is critical to achieving goals. "If you don't know where you are going, you may never get there." Author Unknown
- Develop the "Road Map" The road-map basically consists of a workplan with dates, tasks and responsible parties.
Note: A road-map is not a linear process, it is an iterative one. As you implement phases of the plan, you will discover gaps, or learn that changes to the plan (people, processes, platform) are required to reach your goals. I call this the 3 Ps of software implementation.
If you would like more information regarding EHR implementations, and related compliance issues, sign up for a FREE HITECH / HIPAA Compliance Newsletter. Also, check out a FREE EHR Checklist.
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