As we head towards 2012, “hot topic” in EHR/health it connectivity circle. EHR physician in the Office should be able to connect with external sources of patient data-reference laboratories, other doctors use the same or different immunization registries and EHRs, public health, and the like. Most urgency, though, is the desire to connect with a local hospital. And, of all the integration, this is the most difficult.
Why is this so? Why is “integration” with a local hospital to be such a challenge? Whether the hospital integration is really a myth?
Myth 1: the hospital is one system
To help You understand this question, we have to look a little deeper into what “hospital EHR” really is. Hospitals, historically, Group, has installed in the system those who are different, each may have sold as stand alone best suited to that Department. So, the hospital will have a modern system for medical records (which often involves transcriptionists), another one for the pharmacy, which is different to home lab, one for their Radiology imaging systems, and one for billing. Emergency departments may have separate systems of inpatient medical records system. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, which are often installed in the intensive care unit or in a medical/surgical floor, which is usually separate the system that is closely related to billing, and put in place after-the-fact other software has been entered using the
At the time that the incentive Programmeans the federal EHR (usage), and encourage hospitals to indicate a set of capabilities and performance to access money (meaning use of the money used to be in the range of $ 1 million per hospital), the hospital faced a great challenge. There is already a local installation of the Department of heritage-oriented systems, which may not be related at all. A major challenge has been knitting this separate installations together into something that behaves cohesively. Most of the hospital, not surprisingly, can’t use through the entire piece means software – typically, it is a collection of elements that, together, can achieve the performance required. The institutions even with strong it infrastructure that need to do so.
This is why so many discussions about how to overcome these challenges and knit together. It takes planning, resources, upgrading of some software vendor (usually), and prolonged learning curve for each of the different departments in the ecosystem in the hospital complex.