Nurse's Role in Implementing a Health Information System

Success Implementation of electronic health information technology
There are a number of steps when considering the implementation of a new health information technology system. The government has an organization called HealthIT.gov, and they outline some of the basic steps in the process, including assessing practice readiness, planning the approach, selecting a system, training and implementation, and then meaningful use and quality improvement as the last two steps (HealthIT.gov, 2013).
The first step, organizational readiness, is one of the critical components. This entails the organization understanding what its goals are – important because different systems do different things. Furthermore, these systems are often quite expensive, so most health care organizations have to plan the system implementation as part of their budgeting process, and that will need to be tied to specific organizational goals (Coye & Kell, 2006). There is usually a cross-functional team involved in building out the tech stack for a health care organization, and this is one of the areas where a nurse contributes to the process.
Nurses serve on the front lines. They are often the end users of these systems, and therefore they have specific needs for the systems. As frequent users, if nurses are unable to extract value from the system then the system may not be a good investment; you need to extract value through efficiency gains over repeated processes. A nurse is in the perfect position to outline what they need from health information technology, and whether a particular technology will be a help, hindrance or neutral to the nursing role.
There will then come a point where the goals are understood and a team of people will go research the different alternatives, taking into account the different needs and parameters as laid about by the nurses, doctors, finance department and administrators. Then team that set out the specs in the first place will likely then be called upon to evaluate the contending options. This is where there is a role for not only first-hand research but also examination of testimonials research. For example, there are a number of sites that are specifically geared towards peer reviews of B2B software and technology. Sites like G2Crowd, Trust Radius and others have validated user reviews of health information technology. The nurse involved in this process can go onto these sites and actually see what other users, including other nurses, have said about the software. Thus, nurses contribute to the shared body of knowledge about health information systems and this shared body of knowledge assists the medical community, and other nurses, to help them evaluate the different alternatives.
The nurse then participates in the training and implementation part, once a health information system has been selected. A senior nurse will be responsible for learning about the system and being one of the key adopters, an evangelist for the system with other nurses, and someone who can help them learn how to get the most out of the system. Any form of change can be difficult. Coye and Kell (2006) actually propose a system in their article that helps to determine if the system is the right fit. But with any change, an organization can bring about organizational change more easily if the change has champions in each department (Murphy, 2015).
The nurse champion will be responsible for working with the nurse teams to ensure that they understand the software, how it should be used, and generally would be in charge of the implementation of the system for nurses. What this means is that the nurse leader that is on the team looking at the implementation of a new health information system would be responsible for all aspects of the implementation – contributing to the objectives and specs needed for the system, providing input as to how nurses would use the system and what they need from such a system, then contributing to the evaluation process of the different options, and finally to working with the other nurses as a champion for the system to ensure that it is implemented by the nurses to the highest standard possible.

References

Coye, M. & Kell, J. (2006) How hospitals confront new technology. Health Affairs. Vol. 25 (1)

HealthIT.gov (2013) How to implement EHRs. HealthIT.gov. Retrieved January 2, 2018 from https://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/ehr-implementation-steps

Murphy, M. (2015) In change management, start with champions, not antagonists. Forbes. Retrieved January 2, 2018 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2015/06/25/in-change-management-start-with-champions-not-antagonists/#51dffcfbd0a9