Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Inpatient "lessons learned" from health IT implementations (#HIMSS10)

I attended a great education session this morning where presenters shared their "failures and lessons learned" as they implemented health IT in their hospitals. The room was very crowded and quite a few people were standing in the back. The presenters represented the following hospitals and health systems:
  • MultiCare
  • Children's Hospital Boston 
  • Kaiser Permanente in Southern CA
They shared their successes and also emphasized some of the key failures and lessons learned as they implemented CPOE and other health IT inpatient solutions, including:
  • Conduct regular interdisciplinary workflow meetings
  • Medication reconciliation remains a challenge
  • Who owns the MAR when you transition from a paper MAR to an e-MAR? (Medication Administration Record)
  • Train, re-train, and then train again
  • Physician champions are key
  • Involve the nurses!
  • Account for variations in clinical workflow in different settings
  • Be prepared for verbal orders
  • Physicians want to learn from other clinicians
  • Re-evaluate and continue to make improvements and refinements
Special thanks to HP for sponsoring me to attend and blog here at HIMSS10.   

2 comments:

  1. Did you discuss medical IT and security?

    I read a fascinating Harvard Business Case which discusses a situation where a hacker breaks into a hospital which is crippled as it is fully electronized.

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  2. Hackers will always try to attack hospitals, but health IT solution providers are utilizing more robust security measures to reduce the risk for such attacks. Data security remains a top issue for all health IT professionals.

    ReplyDelete