NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Workflow Gap
Comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance defines gap analysis or the need for gap analysis. According to Golden, Hager, Gould, Mathioudakis, & Pronovost (2016)” a gap analysis can assess existing personnel and non personnel resources within a health system, identify areas for integration of healthcare delivery, and uncovers areas of potential safety and liability risk for a single over aching topic”. This week’s discussion will include the most prominent workflow gap in the scenario provided, including who is responsible for the gap and the outcomes or consequences. The discussion will also identify the meaningful objective to which the gap relates, citing specific points in the Brown article and an explanation how to conduct a gap analysis to gather further information and determine strategies for addressing the gap.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Workflow Gap
Workflow gap is one of the main dilemma that occurs with technology and its surroundings. The scenario explains how the gap exists between the electronic health records (EHR) within the Garden View Hospital and the physician EHR system and lack of ability for the patients to retrieve their own data regarding their own health information. The interoperability and data sharing between the two health record systems is lacking in this scenario. The responsibility of identifying the issue needs to start when the system is implemented. One of the reasoning behind lacking this interoperability can be the high cost for implementation and maintenance. Another reason would be the resistance of physicians and patients on board to use the system as required. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) “2015 Report to Congress on Health Information Blocking” states that, it is apparent that some health care providers and health IT developers are knowingly interfering with the exchange of health information in ways that limit its availability and use to improve health and health care. The outcomes of inadequate data sharing can cause data redundancies, delay in care, and maintenance of decreased health care standards. This can also restrict the patients being involved and aware of their own health care decisions to be made. Patient care will be affected with these gaps that is discussed in the scenario.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Meaningful Use Objective
Meaningful use (MU) refers to the rules and regulations established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for electronic health record incentive program (McGonigle, & Mastrian (2018). There are several meaningful use objectives to which the gap relates that is specified by Bob Brown (2010) in his article “25 steps to meaningful use”. Some of them are (1) provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information, (2) provide clinical summaries to patients for each office visit, (3) capability of exchange key clinical information, and (4) provide summary care record for each transition of care and referral (Brown, 2010). These objectives were mainly highlighted in the stage 3, meaningful use where the technology was given more importance. These objectives are introduced to avoid provider confusion and simplify the EHR Incentive Program and to improve the ways that patients can communicate with providers.
Gap Analysis Strategies
Gap analysis includes identifying and determining the factors that causes the gap between the informatics and the healthcare data, and finding solutions to solve it. The gap analysis strategies will help set the goals and priorities in implementation of every process (Golden, Hager, Gould, Mathioudakis, & Pronovost, 2016). Collecting data that is required is an important way to identify the gap that exists in the system. It is important to know where you are to understand where you want to be. As a nurse informaticist, I would conduct interviews with personnel’s that is involved in the scenario mentioned above. Also observing the workflow in person will also help in identifying to understand the system and the workflow in place now. Surveys can be send out to patients and end users for inputs and for evaluation of the system in place. Once all the data is collected, the gaps can be identified and determine how processes can be implemented to make things better. Involving the leadership of the organization and the end users will be beneficial for recommendations and reviewing. All the data collected, can be entered into a visual tool that is accessible for the team that is involved in the process. For the optimal use of the technology in health care, an adequate workflow is essential for safer and better patient care.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Conclusion
The gap analysis projects are usually lengthy processes to yield better results to meet the needs of the end users. Workflow design when done well, will yield better patient care results in the health care industry. The nurses informaticist helps build the bridge between technology and healthcare workers.
References
Brown. B. (2010). 25 steps to meaningful use. Journal of Health Care Compliance, 12(3), 33-34,
68-69. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Golden, S. H., Hager, D., Gould, L. J., Mathioudakis, N., & Pronovost, P. J. (2016). A gap
analysis needs assessment tool to drive a care delivery and research agenda for integration of care and sharing of best practices across a health system. Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, 43(1), 18-28. Retrieved from https://www.jointcommissionjournal.com/article/S1553-7250(16)30018-6/pdf
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing Informatics and the foundation of knowledge
(4th ed). Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) (2015).
2015 Report to congress on health information blocking. Retrieved from: https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/reports/info_blocking_040915.pdf
You’ve probably heard the adage, “work smarter, not harder.” Workflow improvements, such as electronic health records (EHR), allow nurses to spend more time with patients and less time at the computer. Technological resources can streamline workflow at the point-of-care, improve teamwork, provide material for efficient nursing research, and help nurse managers track staff proficiency and provide standardized procedures.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
The need to think about workflow design is pressing due to several factors in healthcare, including:
- the introduction of new technologies and treatment methodologies into clinical care
- the challenge of coordinating care for the chronically ill
- the participation of a growing number of professionals in a patient’s care team, and new definitions in their roles
- cost and efficiency pressures to improve patient flow
- initiatives to ensure patient safety
- implementation of changes to make the care team more patient-focused.
New Technologies Streamline Workflow at the Point-of-Care
EHR systems allow nurses quick access to patient information at the point of care that can also map drug information and customize patient handouts. Before implementing information technology in a health care environment, it is important to have an understanding of processes and information flows. In addition, the decision makers must consider the various roles in the different departments, and consider ideas from multiple sources. Each department and role may have a different perspective.
Coordinating Care
Valuable information can be lost when poor workflow impedes communication and coordination of care. Characteristics of a poorly functioning work process include unnecessary pauses and rework, delays, established workarounds, gaps where steps are often omitted, and a process that participants feel is illogical. A good workflow will lead to care that is delivered more consistently, reliably, safely, and in compliance with standards of practice.
Improving Teamwork Among the Care Team
Workflow processes are maps that direct the care team on how to accomplish its goals. Nurses can work as a team to create department-specific folders online to store valuable information such as links to research articles, images, alerts, other information needed on the floor, and customized education packets. When communication is smooth, working together as a team comes easily.
Making Care More Cost-Efficient
According to www.healthit.gov, based on the size of the health system and the scope of their EHR implementation, benefits for large hospitals can range from $37 to $59 million over a five-year period in addition to incentive payments. Savings are primarily attributed to automating time consuming paper-driven and labor-intensive tasks. Using EHR results in reduced transcription costs; reduced chart pull, storage, and re-filing costs; improved and more accurate reimbursement coding with improved documentation for highly compensated codes; and reduced medical errors through better access to patient data and error prevention alerts.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Ensuring Patient Safety
Another unique aspect of technology at the bedside allows nurse managers to provide their nursing staff with standardized procedures and track their staff’s proficiency in skills and procedures with skill competency checklists. This ensures that procedures are being performed the right way.
Patient-Centered Care
Patient-centered care is defined as “care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient’s values guide all clinical decisions.”
Healthcare organizations that are patient-centered engage patients as partners in their care. The evidence for principles and practice of patient-centered care has resulted in increasing recognition of, and greater focus on, the engagement of patients, and the value and benefit of patient engagement.
Implementing enhanced workflow strategies will build teamwork, save money, improve patient care and ultimately, outcomes.
For further information on how the Lippincott Solutions suite of institutional, evidence-based decision support software can help your facility optimize clinical workflow and drive more reimbursable patient outcomes,
In the ongoing debate on what constitutes the right requirements for clinical information system (CIS) replacement, enhancement and integration (i.e., transformation) is moving from paper-based information management systems to electronic medical records. Meeting the needs of clients is critical for any CIS transformation project to succeed. Moreover, the transition of clinical information from paper-based to electronic records requires a gap analysis that uses benchmark assessment tools and standard guidelines are needed to achieve evidence-based solutions to reach the client’s goals and objective. In this paper, an evidence-based CIS requirement gap analysis is undertaken to shed light on where the health institution’s CIS stands now and where it intends to be in the future.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
A CIS is frequently described as the interactions between individuals, processes, and technology to support fundamental information operations, management, and availability, for the sake of improving healthcare services (Almunawar & Anshari, 2011). CIS requirements should always be geared towards improving the safety of clinical data and its reliability in a consistent and accurate manner. Different requirements proposed by CIS end-users or clients are based on the clinical workflow that clients intend to capture or improve. Irrespective of the main CIS transformation objectives, it should not take away from the primary objective for designing a CIS, which is to help clinicians manage their patients’ care seamlessly. The requirements for clinical information workflow require both clinical and technical details to show their interrelationship or interdependence, with a detailed description of CIS components that are needed for system developers to optimize the entire system configuration. Because of the complicated and detailed description of the components, the design of hospital information systems is changing from data-collection or storage platform to an interactive, interoperable and a secured platform. Health informaticians must understand how the EHR specifications and requirements are designed and built with the profound methodology mentioned above. This understanding will prevent building redundant functionalities or using functions that do not help clinicians do their job proficiently.
Methods and Results
Healthcare systems generate large amounts of clinical data that can come in different forms. The data may be stored in several databases with different management platforms (Jardim, 2013). Because of the complexity of the data structures or storage requirements, constant overhauls or transformations are needed to meet the patients’ needs. As health institutions are embracing the implementation of electronic health records or pursuing CIS upgrades, health informaticians will play an unprecedented role in current and future trends. For clinical system analysts, CIS requirements need to be elicited, expressed, prioritized, analyzed, and managed in collaboration with the clients or end-users to achieve a good result. Imminent danger awaits a project implementation when the processes are carried out with little or no contribution from the clients.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay
Depending on the chosen methodology, the processes should be sequential and followed by the analyst. To fulfill the requirements, nurse informaticians need to engage the end-users and clients through a series of investigative and interactive processes to identify and differentiate their needs from their wants. Open-ended questions must probe and clarify the details of the client’s requirements. This differs from requirement gathering, because of the absence of face-to-face or constant interactions between the development team and the clients. With regards to the requirements, nurse informaticians need to use visual or textual representations of the user stories (i.e., storyboards) and use cases that are tailored to the project so that the team members can have a better understanding of the process. To prioritize the requirements, clients must specify a list of their needs from “must have” requirements, to “should have” requirements, to “could have” requirements, while considering the time, budget, and other constraints. The list of requirements must be constantly checked for clarity and consistency to uncover what might be missing, over-stated, or understated: this process is called the requirements analysis. One of the key activities is the managing of requirements, which is focused on keeping track on what is elicited, expressed, prioritized, analyzed, or changed as the project moves forward.NURS 6421 week 3 Assignment Essay