ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS

Comprehensive plan focusing on strategies for implementation of change to electronic medical records

Comprehensive plan focusing on strategies for implementation of change to electronic medical records

In 1994, the Computer based Patient Record Institute founded the Davies Awards of Excellence and managed the program until merging with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in 2002. The award has annually highlighted healthcare providers who successfully led efforts to transform their organizations through technology, with the award largely focusing on the implementation of healthcare information technology (IT) in larger institutions, ranging from rural health systems to big city hospitals.

The awards are named in honour of Dr. Nicholas E. Davies, an Atlanta based practice physician committed to the ideal of improving patient care through better health information management. As a member of the Institute of Medicine's Patient Record Study Committee, Dr. Davies helped coin the term "computer based patient record," (Burrington, etal., 2005) now more widely known as electronic medical records and electronic health records (EMR-EHR). A tireless advocate for IT solutions, Dr. Davies was chairperson elect of the American College of Physicians when he was tragically killed in a plane crash with Senator John G. Tower of Texas in April, 1991. His spirit lives on in the Davies Award of Excellence. In 2003, HIMSS extended the awards to include ambulatory practices with EMR-EHRs and in 2004 added yet another category for public health. Sponsored by HIMSS, the Nicholas E. Davies Award Program encourages and recognizes excellence in the implementation of EMR-EHR systems through showcasing concrete examples, understanding and sharing the value of EMR EHR systems, offering visibility and recognition for their projects and sharing successful implementation strategies(Clarke, etal., 2006).

The papers are evaluated in terms of EMR-EHR implementation, strategy, planning, project management, and governance. The clinicians who submit entries discuss the functionality of their EMR EHRs and how those systems met the needs of staff and patients. Additionally, they speak to how the technology design works to bring about the desired functionality and the institutions' return on investment. The purpose of this white paper, and the three others in this collection, is to give healthcare providers a survey of best practices in EMR-EHR implementation, solid examples of leadership, and a glimpse at the return on their investment (ROI) the EMR-EHR offers. This paper, focused on implementation, surveys the varying approaches that different organizations take in implementing EHR technology, whether they choose the "slow roll" or the "big bang" approach to instituting healthcare IT(Tang, etal., 2006). Most of the information in these papers comes from Davies “organizational” winners between the years 2001 and 2005—the postY2K era—when EMR-EHR vendors began aggressively adding more modernized features to their clinical systems, and EMR EHR implementation became more sophisticated.

Large hospital systems surveyed include Maimonides Medical Centre in Brooklyn, NY; Queens Health Network in Queens, NY; Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in suburban Chicago, IL; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre, OH; The University of Illinois at Chicago; Ohio State University Health System, Columbus; And Harvard Vanguard in ...