Your hospital implemented an electronic medical record (EMR) six months ago. An interprofessional task force has been formed including representatives and management from nursing, medicine, informatics, hospital administration, finance, quality improvement, admissions, case management, and the policy and procedure committee. The purpose of the task force is to assess the current status of the project and to determine interventions that might be needed at this point. A nursing staff survey indicates that 60% are satisfied, and a physician survey indicates that 48% are satisfied. These percentages need to increase. CQI reports indicate that documentation is still not complete, the alert systems are not always effective, staff are keeping backup hard copies with no oversight on these copies, and there are an insufficient number of computers on some units. The nursing staff, physicians, and other staff do not feel that they are prepared to use the system. The “talk” in the hallways is that this project will fail.
1.
What are the problems?
2.
Is more information needed to fully understand the problems? If so, what information?
3.
What needs to be done to resolve the problems?
4.
What could have been done to prevent these problems when the project was initially planned and implemented?
5.
How would you plan further evaluation (including timeline)?
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