Question

Home Health of America is about to implement the new EHR. This EHR will be used by all of the nurses, nursing aides, therapists, and other staff members who work with patients in the patient’s home. It will also be accessed in the home office for billing and other administrative purposes. The chief executive officer mandated the big bang go-live strategy. He also mandated that the go-live begins on Monday, which is their busiest day. His thoughts were that if the EHR could handle Monday, then it could handle anything. The users ran into several problems on the first day. Some of the functionality did not work, the cellular connections used to connect to the IS did not work at some of the homes, and the documentation was slow, which prevented them from seeing the patients in a timely manner. They had planned for some overtime as they knew that documenting in the new EHR would be slower. The overtime ended up being twice what was expected and they still did not see three of the patients. The decision was made to go back to the paper system while the problems were worked out.

1. Identify the implementation issues in the case.  

2. If you worked for Home Health of America and the chief executive officer mandated the big bang go-live strategy, what would you have done?

Answer 1

Answer: Although EHR ( electronic health record) system has more benefits and produces better outcomes in the healthcare organization but due to some of the challenges and barriers it is little bit difficult to implement EHR. In the above case there were many issues which occured in the implementation of the EHR such as:

• Technical ability: The technical ability of the system as here problem occured that some of the functionality did not work, the cellular connections used to connect to the IS did not work at some of the homes, and the documentation was slow. These things depends upon the performance of the system. The ability of the computer to retrieve information is effected by the age of the system.
• Absence of training: As EHR is the new and advanced technology that is being sent implemented it is not necessary that every staff and healthcare professionals will be familiar to it. They need training for operating the new system according to the functions.

If I would have worked for Home health America and the the chief executive officer mandated the big bang go live strategy then I would handle it calmly as a phrased approach to the problem can work well at this stage and provide more confidence in working. Poor experience in the early phase produces negativity so to make positive outcome one has to pre- planned the process for the implementation.