nursing informatics: EMPOWERING NURSES TO WORK MORE EFFICIENTLY

SMOOTHING OUT THE WORKFLOW

Implementing an Electronic Health Record (EHR) will transform the flow of patients as well as the workflow of the health care providers within their organization. Transformation of health care includes boosting quality of care, patient safety , as well as magnifying access to care and minimizing the cost of care (Chaiken, 2011). The importance of effective workflow in delivery of care is pertinent in improving healthcare.

Workflow is the structure of physical and mental tasks performed by various people within and between work environments (Broberg, 2012). Anytime you make a change to your practice, especially when implementing health IT, the workflow associated with clinical and practice management processes will change.

Please click the link to learn more about workflow

View the video below to learn more about the EHR

When technology fail to adequately support the goal or the flow of the care team, it often causes workaround workflows. In mapping out current workflows and analyzing how my organization gets work done, I have discovered an area that can use some improvement. There is a delay in patient care when staff have to put in a username and password to access patient medications and information. For that I reason, I think the staff should be able to use fingerprinting to access the omnicell as well as the medication cart at a faster rate which would improve the workflow. This would also prevent anyone from stilling your password, making it safer for everyone. Ultimately, we would see an increase in the quality of care as well as patient satisfaction since the patients can get the meds at a quicker rate.

1424561310