From the Editor: Data Gathering & The Care Plan
A newly appointed CMIO raised the question during a HIMSS Physician IT Symposium, but it’s being asked everywhere: With the pressure on for electronic record implementation, “How do we help physicians to overcome change fatigue?”
The answer: A team approach focused on revising and optimizing workflow—and collaboration with nurses.
This straightforward recommendation reflects some of the changes happening in healthcare: CMIOs and their organizations are realizing that nurses, as major stakeholders and facilitators of the majority of hands-on care to patient, are critical to the success of IT system implementation. This month’s cover story focuses on nursing informatics’ increasing role in shaping health IT decisions before and after implementation. And who better to help a facility ensure that an EMR delivers all necessary information in an easy-to-access, usable form?
“Nursing informatics is a unique role,” says nurse informaticist and American Nursing Informatics Association education board member James Finley, MBA, RN, BC. “Because nurses provide continuous patient care, we understand workflow and data flow and other departments’ requirements.”
Although many of these power tech users hold other titles, they might be de facto nurse informaticists for their facilities or healthcare systems—much like their clinician counterparts might or might not hold the title of CMIO, while performing all the functions of the role. But get ready to hear the title of chief nursing informatics officer more often…as we went to press, the VA had a job opening for a CNIO.
Complicating the efforts to create standardized nursing language in EMRs is the fact that the ICD-9 code, the underpinning of most electronic record systems, is about to change. CMIOs are deploying technologies like computer-assisted coding and code scrubbing software to cut down on coding errors, the bane of many hospitals’ record-keeping. Increasing data demands and the changeover to ICD-10 will keep things lively for a few years, at least.
Quality data will be the vital fuel that drives healthcare informaticists of every stripe. Our story on clinical data repositories this month shows how these systems can and must be more than just a place to park your vital stats: you need to know what data you want to keep and how you want to use it. Securely sharing clinical data is a major part of meaningful use, and platform neutrality (or at least, interoperability) should be on your to-do list.