Reference no: EM133666518
Overprepare and overperform: a necessity for change management A large acute-care hospital implemented a new best-of-suite CIS to serve as the foundation for its new EHR. The system provided functionality for creating patient history and physical exam reports, capturing physician notes and orders, and an NIS for nursing documentation and development of patient care plans. The hospital knew that the new system was a dramatic change from the legacy computer system that its nurses and doctors were currently using. To prepare for this significant change, a special change management team was assigned to develop an implementation plan that focused on supporting the needs of the physicians and nurses. The change management team identified the following as critical to the success of the transition:
• Selection of a multidisciplinary team composed of physicians, nurses, and information technology (IT) staff to guide development and implementation efforts
• Selection of a physician to serve as the EHR champion
• Selection of a nurse to serve as the NIS champion
• Customize application templates for data capture and system workflow to individual clinical department visits (for example, pediatrics and internal medicine), physicians, and business processes
• IT staff and clinicians work collaboratively to ensure that all data capture and navigation methods effectively and efficiently support physician and nurse workflow
• Implement a continuous training effort for physicians and nurses
• Super-users should be available in every department and clinical unit every day, around the clock (24/7), to provide immediate assistance to providers during the first two months of the transition period
Discussion Questions
1. Why was it important to select physician and nurse champions? Ideally, what qualifications for these roles might the physician and nurse have?
2. Why do you suppose customization of the application templates by clinical department and physician was considered important?
3. How important do you believe it was to have the IT staff work with physicians and nurses in designing the workflow of the system?
4. Do you believe that having super-users available 24/7 for two months was necessary or overkill? Explain why or why not.