NURS 6051 THE IMPACT OF NURSING INFORMATICS ON PATIENT OUTCOMES AND PATIENT CARE EFFICIENCIES
Nursing is one of the fields where a collaborative approach is essential. Nursing informatics and technology experts must collaborate with all nurses to ensure smooth service delivery in order to deliver improved services (McGonigle &Mastrian, 2022). When patients enter a medical facility, they are welcomed by a receptionist who then directs them to the next stage after taking their information. The patient is directed to triage, where a nurse evaluates them to submit their numerous issues, including the urgency of patient treatment.
Prior to the doctor seeing the patient, conditions including blood pressure, sugar levels, and BMI are evaluated because they are so important. If the recording method is automated, the same results can be seen in the patient’s records, where they are sent straight to the doctor scheduled for that day. The prescription is suggested by the day’s doctor after the patient has been examined, admitted to the ward, or undergone additional testing. Depending on the doctor’s instructions, a nurse may step in at this point to administer medication or dress wounds. Patients undergo this operation on a daily basis, and nurses and other specialists must work together to provide the necessary services.
It is important to focus on improving relationships and technology since it reduces unnecessary delays, speeds up procedures, and, in the worst situations, it may prevent loss of life (Mosier, Roberts & Englebright, 2019). It is possible to effectively transmit patient data online in the triage and doctor’s consultation areas, which eliminates delays, lowers costs, and ensures the efficient provision of medical services. Nursing informatics is still developing, particularly in a field where the future of nursing appears to be more promising. Eliminating the manual patient recording system improves collaborative interactions, lowers costs, increases productivity, and raises quality (Ng, Alexander & Frith, 2018). Professional partnerships reportedly reach a whole new level thanks to emerging technology, which enhances service provision in healthcare facilities.
Success in health care industry is often measured through patient outcomes. This metric is vital in ensuring that the available practices and procedures are efficient and also help in recognizing the ones that are not effective. Nonetheless, measuring patient outcomes is always associated with big data sets that are utilized to enhance these results in several ways. In turn, health informatics can play crucial role in this process. For instance, informatics can help in appropriately gathering, assessing, and leveraging the data, which can be used to enhance processes, improve efficiency, identify patients who are at risk, and advance research in an effort to enhance patient outcomes. Moreover, McGonigle & Mastrian (2017) argue that informatics has led to emergence of new technologies in clinical practice such as smart pumps, electronic health records, wearables, bar-code medication administration systems, and smartphones which are designed to enhance efficiency, foster safety, and streamline nursing practice. As such, it is imperative for nurses to have informatics competency to help them fostering effective communication, mitigating medical errors, managing knowledge, and supporting point of care decision making (Glassman, 2017). It is against this backdrop that this paper will explore use of electronic health records (EHR) as the proposed nursing informatics project to improve patient outcomes and care efficiencies.
Description of the Project
EHRs connote the digital adaption of patient paper based health records. The initiative has been proposed to address the issues that arise from the paper-based health records such as duplication, errors in drug administration, loss of records, mistaken identity, making of uninformed clinical decisions, and inefficient billing (Kruse et al., 2017). Since the health care environment is consistently changing and becoming highly competitive, the adoption of the EHRs can play a vital role in leveraging the patient care delivery and enhance the competitive capability of the care organization. Given the vital role that EHRs play in health care, Glassman (2017) calls for the meaningful use of EHRs. This involves sharing the data with patients and engaging them in their care within the frameworks of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Moreover, crucial patient care devices including vital sign monitors, cardiac monitors, and I.V. infusion pumps can be connected to EHRs to enhance the capacity of initiative and further improve patient outcomes (Glassman, 2017). Essentially, the use of EHRs is also supported by the American Nurses Association who calls for universally recognized terminologies among its members to support nursing practice within the EHR solutions (American Nurses Association, 2018).
Stakeholders
Clinicians
Clinicians encompass health care providers such as physicians, nurses, and pharmacists et cetera who take center stage in patient care provision. Therefore, EHR implementation will help them to access accurate and updated patient records to enable them provide the best diagnosis and treatment to realize positive patient outcomes.
The Management
This is the key stakeholder who can either ensure the success of the project or its failure. A good management should provide all necessary support required for change and ensure that the project aligns with the expectations of other players. The success of the project will enhance the health setting’s reputation as an affordable, quality health care provider.
The Patients
This is the primary stakeholder for implementing the EHR project. All the EHR endeavors are designed to improve the outcomes for patients and so, the project is designed to benefit the patients. Essentially, the success of the project will be measured based on the outcomes of the patients.
Front Office Staff
The staff at the front office plays a vital role in EHR implementation because they are tasked with key responsibility of feeding critical patient information including medical history, demographic, billing, and contact information into the EHR system. Any inappropriate entry in the system may lead to adverse impacts for patients.
EHR Vendors
EHR vendors are expected to design flexible systems that can meet the expectation of the organization, failure to which, the project will face eminent fall.
Patient Outcomes or Patient-Care Efficiencies
The implementation of EHRs will ensure enhancement of patient outcomes through provision of quality care. EHRs ensure provision of real-time, patient-oriented health data that are availed instantly and safely to the authorized users. Moreover, apart from providing medical and treatment history of the patient, EHRs also enable wider options of patient care due to its capability of accessing evidence-based care practice tools that can help providers to make informed decisions at the point of care. In addition, EHRs enables real-time point of care communication, which is essential in avoiding time wasted in peruse manual health records. Ultimately, the implementation of EHRs will lead to positive patient outcomes such as quality of health care, patient-centered care, reduction in hospital stays, and reductions in health care costs (Wani & Malhotra, 2018).
Technologies Required for the Project
Technology is a vital requirement in optimization of EHR. The project will require a standard server to join together with the rest of the system in the health care setting. The available computers will be utilized in EHR system, but they will be upgraded with the current operating system. To address compatibility issues, EHR system will be updated to be compatible with OS and windows. Moreover, the IT experts will be required to conduct training among the stakeholders to create awareness on how the system operates and the kind of processes that will be needed in every stage. Other technological requirements include application of virtual assistants to help in documentation, improving the interoperability through artificial intelligence, and optimizing the interface of EHR to increase usability.
The Project Team
The Project Manager
The project manager (PM) is one of the key members of the project team. The PM is expected to be technologically savvy and experienced in EHR implementation. The PM is tasked with responsibilities of overseeing the overall success of the project including attaining requirements and realizing deadlines for the implementation of the new EHR system (Vant, 2020).Moreover, the PM links various phases of the project to sophistically integrate and work together. The PM is also expected to facilitate the processes of planning, developing, designing, implementing, and testing phases of EHR to ensure they coordinate their effects to realize the desired goal of the project.
Physicians
Physicians are tasked with important responsibilities in EHR project including creating goals for the EHR implementation, identifying the best EHR vendor, trail staff satisfaction, address clinical needs, assess and select technology, defining the scope of the project and establishing budget, anticipate the profitability and check the progress, and to monitor the effect of the EHR on productivity.
Clinicians
Clinicians are expected to play a role of evaluating clinical workflows and propose changes, scrutinizing the clinical usability of the EHR software, and validating the descriptions of future clinical workflow. Moreover, clinicians can potentially work alongside EHR vendor to address any issue and also champion for the project among colleagues.
IT Experts
The IT professionals have responsibilities of evaluating software and hardware requirements, deal with or supervise system maintenance or upgrades, run system testing and go-live, and coordinate support and service for the system. The IT experts may also collaborate with the vendor for trouble shooting and also act as project manager.
Office Manager
The office manager is responsible for appraising the routine usability of EHR software, managing the change from paper-based records to digital records, help in overseeing system training, managing integration with supporting software such as back-office applications, recognize data transformation and reporting needs, and supervise EHR integration with legacy technology.
Front Office Staff
During the project implementation, the front office staff are tasked with various responsibilities including data entry to facilitate billing and coding, routine change from normal paper records to EHR data, use and testing crucial functions including scheduling, documentation of patient records such as insurance authorization, confirm data swap with pharmacies and other vendors, and recording any hitches or incompatibility in routine operations.
Essentially, engaging the project team is crucial in integrating all the features that are required in different stages and departments ranging from patient visit to the treatment process. Regarding the role of nurse informaticist, McGonigle & Mastrian (2017) postulate that they play a vital role of gathering and analyzing complex patient data and diffusing to different concerned stakeholders within the EHR system. Moreover, nurse informaticists also initiative system changes and improvement alongside IT experts to ensure quality service provision.
References
American Nurses Association. (2018). Inclusion of recognized terminologies supporting nursing practice within electronic health records and other health information technology solutions. Retrieved from https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/official-position-statements/id/Inclusion-of-Recognized-Terminologies-Supporting-Nursing-Practice-within-Electronic-Health-Records/
Glassman, K. S. (2017). Using data in nursing practice. American Nurse Today, 12(11), 45–47. Retrieved from https://www.americannursetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ant11-Data-1030.pdf
Kruse, C. S., Mileski, M., Vijaykumar, A. G., Viswanathan, S. V., Suskandla, U., & Chidambaram, Y. (2017). Impact of electronic health records on long-term care facilities: systematic review. JMIR medical informatics, 5(3), e35.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2017). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Vant, A. (2020). Four Crucial Members of an EHR Implementation Team. Ehrinpractice.com. Retrieved 11 June 2020, from https://www.ehrinpractice.com/four-crucial-members-of-an-ehr-implementation-team-154.html.
