Nursing Informatics Project Proposal

Answer

Nursing Informatics Project Proposal

            The advancement in technology has prompted many corporations and government agencies to embrace this disruptive change. The health sector has not been left behind in this technological trend. The industry has witnessed many developments such as Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems used in most healthcare facilities across the world. There has been momentous progress in adopting the EMR system to foster technological inventions and innovations in a bid to store patients’ records and ensures easy retrieval of these data, proper diagnosis of chronic and mils illness through better devices for detecting diseases and manufacturing quality and effective drugs. This project describes EMR systems and identifies stakeholders affected by the project. It also explains patient outcomes or care efficiencies that the project seeks to improve and how the improvements would occur. Moreover, it identifies technologies needed to implement the project, roles of the project team, and how nurse informatics will be incorporated in the project.

The Chosen Project

             This proposal seeks to offer a comprehensive report on the needs and uses of EMR systems in hospitals. EMR system is a modern trend in many healthcare facilities that allows healthcare practitioners to record a patient medical data in a computer thereby reducing the use of paperwork in documenting the treatment history of most patients (Buntin, Burke, Hoaglin, & Blumenthal, 2011). In hospitals, EMR systems help physicians to formulate data on various disease diagnoses that in long run assist researchers to gain primary information about a particular disease.

Stakeholders Influenced By the Project

             Health system is characterized by various autonomous organizations that work jointly to ensure effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of healthcare services. Similarly, in the establishment of EMR system, several stakeholders within the healthcare sector must share their views on the adoption and use of the system within their facilities. Some of the stakeholders who share their views about the system entail health caregivers, hospital, team from the information and technology industry, managers of healthcare facilities, and patients.

              The hospital provides the financial support needed to develop and adopt EMR systems. It also formulates a legal framework upon which the system will be founded on. Similarly, health caregivers have primary information on the impacts of using paper charts in reviewing patient data. Moreover, their contribution assists other stakeholders to understand the challenges they endure as they seek to monitor and understand the treatment history of their patients (CGonigle, & Mastrian, 2017). Similarly, the information and technology team designs, installs, and implements the EMR systems in healthcare facilities while hospital managers supervise the effective adoption and administration of the EMR systems. The managers also partner with the information and technology teams to ensure that the system functions properly as designed.  As the end users of EMR systems, the patients make decisions in order to create awareness amongst themselves.

Patient Outcomes the Project Seeks To Improve

             One of the major reasons for developing the EMR systems is to incorporate the technology in the healthcare sector to foster inventions and innovations. The technological advancement has prompted the need to create a digitalized system that ensures effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of services in the healthcare industry and across other sectors. Menachemi and Brooks (2006) contended that the technology has shortened diagnosis procedures and improve effectiveness and quality in the delivery of healthcare services to patients.

            A key feature attributed to EMR systems is the financial benefits that come along with its adoption. Although the initial cost of installing the EMR systems can be relatively high, Rutherford (2008) alleged that costs of maintaining the system are low. The decision by hospitals to use EMR systems rather than paper recording has an immense positive outcome on the financial investment of the hospital. Moreover, physicians saved many expenses on drugs as there was an improvement in the efficiency of radiological diagnosis and tests, as well as, improved billing and record systems that consequently reduced possibilities of billing mistakes in the hospital.

             The main purpose of developing EMR systems was to help various health caregivers track patients’ medical records for an extended period. As such, the system can recognize those patients who urgently need preventive screening and checkup sessions. Wang, Kung and Byrd (2018) posited that the systems can detect and monitor how each patient responds to simple medical processes such as vaccinations, body temperature readings, and monitoring and reading their blood pressures among others. EMR systems were also established to help eradicate tiresome paperwork. Undoubtedly, various patients had different health care charts and preparing such charts was tedious and consumed much time. Moreover, it was difficult to ensure high level of accuracy because the charts were not drawn accurately by various health caregivers. Nonetheless, adopting the EMR systems will enable patients to access a summary of their clinical appointments that are conveyed to within a short period (Buntin, Burke, Hoaglin & Blumenthal, 2011). Sending briefed medical data by hospitals creates an opportunity for patients to understand and embrace what transpired during their clinical appointments. The summary of the clinical appointments to the patients encompass the medical care offered during the appointment, the recommended treatment and any follow up appointment.

Technology Required For Implementing the Project

To implement this project (EMR system), the most appropriate technology that will be used is Health Information Technology (HIT) system. In healthcare facilities, the EMR system helps nurses and other healthcare practitioners to manage patients’ medical data (CGonigle & Mastrian, 2017). It contains information such as patient’s medical history that health attendants collect. The EMR system is a considered a HIT system that performs numerous functions in various hospitals. Some of the functions of EMR systems in healthcare facilities encompasses educational, administrative, as well as, research related studies. As administrative tool, the EMR system helps track progress of patients, as well as, their respective treatment history that assists various health caregivers to provide specialized healthcare services to these individuals based on their previous diagnoses of various illnesses (Menachemi & Brooks, 2006). As an educational tool, the EMR system offer critical information regarding patients and their medical records. Such information can be accessed and thus offer an effective platform for making reasonable decisions among healthcare practitioners on the most appropriate healthcare services to render to their clients. More importantly, hospitals can use the diagnosis data to formulate permanent solutions to deal with chronic disorders.

 Roles of Project Team and How the Nurse Informaticist Will Be Incorporated In the Project

             The EMR systems are managed by certified doctors, nurses, and doctors within the hospital. The system is installed in each department in the healthcare facility and this implies that nurses at the recording sections can access the data recorded by pharmacist into the system. This ensures that all experts within the healthcare are brought on board and patients’ treatment history is tracked to supervise quality medical attention. Nonetheless, for the purposes of maintenance, hospitals should hire and deploy experts in their information and technology control department to will ensure that the EMR systems function as expected. Disputably, Rutherford (2008) posited that the EMR systems should be put in the Information and Technology department in the administrative arrangement of the healthcare facility.

             Nurse informaticist will be incorporated in the project during the trial phase of the workability of the EMR system software to train different stakeholders. The stakeholders are trained to enable them understand the system before implementing it. The informaticist will be involved in setting a nationwide pilot program for training various stakeholders within the healthcare sector. More importantly, he or she will be involved in training members of the information and technology to enable them install, implement, operate, and maintain the systems with least supervision.