PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Heidi Wurtz

Publications and source records attributed to Heidi Wurtz.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Leveraging systems thinking to design patient-centered clinical documentation systems.

A hospital is a type of system, yet healthcare information technology (IT) has largely failed to view it as such. The failure to view the hospital as a system has contributed to the practice of inefficient and ineffective clinical documentation. This paper seeks to address how current clinical documentation practices reflect and reinforce inefficiency and poor patient care. It also addresses how rethinking clinical documentation and IT together may improve the entire healthcare process by promoting a more integrated and patient-centered healthcare information paradigm. Rethinking IT in support of clinical documentation from a system-oriented perspective may help improve patient care and provider communication.

Efficiency, Organizational↗

Making sausage--effective management of enterprise-wide clinical IT projects.

Unlike most other industries in which company employees are, well, company employees, U.S. hospitals are typically run by both employees (nurses, technicians, and administrative staff) and independent entrepreneurs (physicians and nurse practitioners). Therefore, major enterprise-wide clinical IT projects can never simply be implemented by mandate. Project management processes in these environments must rely on methods that influence adoption rather than presume adoption will occur. "Build it and they will come" does not work in a hospital setting. This paper outlines a large academic medical center's experiences in managing an enterprise-wide project to replace its core clinical systems functionality. Best practices include developing a cogent optimal future-state vision, communications planning and execution, vendor validation against the optimal future-state vision, and benefits realization assessment.

Diffusion of Innovation↗

Early input makes for successful system output. Get executives involved early for system implementation decisions.

Key decisions made upfront by a medical group's executive team and a clear understanding of organizational goals and objectives provide critical information for the people designing and testing a new information system. Before diving into the design sessions that provide the requirements for building the system, three key meetings with the executive team must take place. Those meetings--and their outcomes--set the tone for success.

Decision Making, Organizational↗