Health Systems Cut Costs by Eliminating Redundant IT Apps

- Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System recently completed a $500 million, 24-month transition to a single Epic EHR system across its 17 hospitals and over 250 care sites, replacing its previous Oracle Health and Altera Healthquest systems. This new system integrates clinical records with registration, scheduling, and billing, providing patients with a single billing statement. - To transition into nursing informatics, credentials such as the Nursing Informatics Certification (NI-BC) offered by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) are valuable. Eligibility for this exam generally requires a BSN, two years of RN experience, recent practice hours in informatics nursing, and continuing education in the field. - The 21st Century Cures Act, along with rules from the ONC and CMS, mandates increased interoperability and patient access to their health information, largely through the use of standardized APIs. These regulations prohibit "information blocking" and are intended to allow patients to access their health data through third-party apps, which impacts how health IT teams manage and exchange data. - Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a key standard for exchanging healthcare information electronically. It uses a web-based approach with "Resources" to define data formats, which allows different EHR systems to communicate with each other more effectively. - Common frustrations nurses have with EHRs include physician-centric design, excessive clicking and redundant data entry, and a lack of mobile-friendly interfaces. A survey of over 9,000 nurses revealed that more than two-thirds believe poor EHR usability contributes to job dissatisfaction. - AI-driven clinical decision support systems are being integrated into critical care to analyze large datasets for early detection of conditions like sepsis and to help streamline tasks such as medication dosing and ventilator management. These tools have shown the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy and reduce ICU stays. - For nurses moving into health IT, a foundational understanding of data science is beneficial. This includes familiarity with healthcare data sources like EHRs and claims data, data standards such as ICD-10 and SNOMED CT, and the basics of data analysis and visualization. - An EHR optimization project at UCHealth, prompted by nurse complaints about documentation time, resulted in saving 18 minutes per 12-hour shift. The project involved a task force of nurses and IT analysts who redesigned flowsheets to remove unnecessary documentation and hide irrelevant information.