Ponder this question, DON couldnt answer..

[OpensourceRN]

Originally Posted by Ricu

Good input Opensource. Thank you.

I hold no fault with electronic documentation whatsoever in fact, prefer it. Now let's look at how those systems are built. I'm currently trapped in the "staged construction" of a system being done by our own IT department. I recognize that if the hospital would've just bought the product that we will eventually end up with it would've been a lot easier and considering the fleet of IT people running 24/7 in the place, no real money was saved but spent on salaries. Simultaneous to the never ending implementation of our nursing documentation system was our electronic medication administration record. Oh, and by the way, including lab and radiology reporting,none of the systems talk to eachother. Dollar for dollar, I think it's by far smarter AND safer to spend a million dollars on a comprehensive package, do one giant installation and get it over with because this "homegrown" crap takes an eternity to complete and then there's the support of it all. What a hassle.

Okay, I'm done now.

R

Ricu
Great points......Problem with IT today is that the vendors wanted to take hospitals (even for the last 20 yrs) for all their money, with very limited scoped products that were not fully baked or some that were even over baked (so many bells and whistles when all you needed were the fundamental capabilities)and you only get 5% utilization of the product because it is not user friendly and very complicated. An integrated solution makes sense for the most part, but vendors do not do "everything" perfect. Best of Suite often is a great way to move with technology.

There are opensource solutions already on the market to help cut the costs significantly. The challenge is that with an opensource solution, you are not going to get the Prettiest application. So you need good leaders to understand what the needs are and guide your clinicians to a solution that works and is proven and doesn't take 10 yrs to install with no user adoption by the end of it.

Really when it comes down to it.it comes down to workflow and workflow is broken down into 4 levels.....
Organizational- information across the organization (eg patient enters ED, then goes to lab, then up to unit, then down to radiology and the system is capturing all that information)
Departmental- Inforamtion across the department
Role- Consulting amongst roles and different clinicians
lastly User-User based workflow, what do I do everyday....this is what most people think of when speaking of workflow, but this is the last level to address.

There are opensource offerings today that hospitals should really look into. The opensource offerings can save hospitals millions of dollars and have them up and running in a much shorter timeframe.

[Ricu]

Originally Posted by OpensourceRN

Ricu
Great points......Problem with IT today is that the vendors wanted to take hospitals (even for the last 20 yrs) for all their money, with very limited scoped products that were not fully baked or some that were even over baked (so many bells and whistles when all you needed were the fundamental capabilities)and you only get 5% utilization of the product because it is not user friendly and very complicated. An integrated solution makes sense for the most part, but vendors do not do "everything" perfect. Best of Suite often is a great way to move with technology.

There are opensource solutions already on the market to help cut the costs significantly. The challenge is that with an opensource solution, you are not going to get the Prettiest application. So you need good leaders to understand what the needs are and guide your clinicians to a solution that works and is proven and doesn't take 10 yrs to install with no user adoption by the end of it.

Really when it comes down to it.it comes down to workflow and workflow is broken down into 4 levels.....
Organizational- information across the organization (eg patient enters ED, then goes to lab, then up to unit, then down to radiology and the system is capturing all that information)
Departmental- Inforamtion across the department
Role- Consulting amongst roles and different clinicians
lastly User-User based workflow, what do I do everyday....this is what most people think of when speaking of workflow, but this is the last level to address.

There are opensource offerings today that hospitals should really look into. The opensource offerings can save hospitals millions of dollars and have them up and running in a much shorter timeframe.

Hi again Opensource,

Thanks for providing some good insight into what exactly these information systems are really supposed to do. Obviously this isn't always clear in application. You touched on another point that I'd like to address; overdeveloped systems. While technically possible to design, building many "enhancements" into systems that will never be used is wasteful. It's a little like buying a car or home entertainment system. Bells and whistles attract the attention of buyers who in this case, frequently have little real use exposure or none at all. The end-user would likely do without the "useful" options rather than invest the time into "personalizing" settings. I'll give the example of using a certain cardiac monitoring system. About the only specialized feature that I use with regularity is S-T monitoring. Setting it up is a pain in the "J point" and the EASI configuration of electrode placement is artifact prone. Tracking S-T is crucial for patients having an MI so I deal with it. Vendor reps like to say that the artifact problem is related to skin prep but in practice there's a lot more to it than that. I just can't wait for the latest version to come out. I bet it will have remote defibrillation or perhaps an ascultate lung sounds enhancement...

R