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Health information technology (Health IT) is an integral part of modern healthcare affecting individuals and organizations. The implementation and adoption of Health IT systems are crucial for the improvement of medical practice, workflow efficiency, and patient outcomes. Being the primary users of the technology, nurses play a pivotal role in the success of Health IT in their clinical settings. Our healthcare organization has recently adopted Epic software that is an example of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) technology. Epics initial implementation was far from being effortless as the new EHR functionality was met with resistance. However, the productive cooperation between the nurses and the IT professionals during the training process resulted in improved communication, enhanced screening procedures, and accurate documentation. The involvement of nurses in EHR implementation is also important because they provide practical ideas for the improvement of patient care quality that impacts the health of individuals and populations. Moreover, nurses help to identify the data and acceptable standardized terminology to be used in the EHR (Masters, 2020). Therefore, nurses have a significant impact on the effective implementation and adoption of the Health IT system in our organization.
The workflow issue that has impacted my practice in the Emergency Department (ED) is the reoccurring problem of time delays between the reception of patients and their actual admission. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) was used to measure the quality and efficiency of care in our clinical setting. The HCAHPS is a national, standardized survey reflecting patients hospital experience and their opinion about the quality of care offered by a healthcare provider (Marquis & Huston, 2017). The negative HCAHPS feedback helped our organization to identify the cause of workflow disruptions, slow communication, and poor coordination. Thus, the patient survey detected the need for the optimization of patient bed flow in the ED through the proper implementation of Health IT. ED crowding is a serious problem for healthcare providers because of its negative impact on performance and patient care. In 2006, the issue was declared a national epidemic by the Institute of Medicine (Stahley et al., 2020, p. 2). Because of extended waiting times, many patients have to leave without seeing a doctor, which undermines patient safety, causes employee turnover, and decreases hospital revenue.
To resolve the issue of ED crowding and poor bed flow control, our healthcare organization analyzed the problem and developed a strategy for restructuring the Health IT system. The solution was a result of a joint effort and a continuous collaboration between the management, the IT professionals, and the ED nurses. Health IT systems became more organized and ensured smooth communication and quick information sharing between different departments and employees. For example, environmental service workers received the opportunity to clean patient rooms and public spaces in a timely manner with the help of real-time notifications and patient status updates provided by the nurses. Additionally, our organization implemented the method of prioritizing low-acuity patients in the Health IT system, which considerably reduced the length of stay and produced a positive patient response (Stahley et al., 2020). The method also decreased the frequency of medical errors and patient mortality caused by a healthcare providers inability to admit patients without ambulance offload delays. Finally, improved bed flow control increased patient outcomes, nursing practice effectiveness, and employee satisfaction with working conditions.
References
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2017). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: Theory and application (9th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
Masters, K. (2020). Role development in professional nursing practice (5th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Stahley, L., OBrien, P. B., Lowe, M., Porteous, P., & Austin, S. (2020). The impact of bed traffic control and improved flow process on throughput measures in a metropolitan emergency department. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 111.
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