How One Health System Customized Its Own EHR Enterprise Solution
When EHR vendor enterprise platforms fell short of meeting Holy Name Medical Center’s needs, the healthcare system decided to design its own EHR enterprise solution.
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- Healthcare systems and hospitals have a broad range of needs that may require a customized EHR enterprise solution, instead of a prepackaged EHR vendor solution.
Jessica Cox, director of product solutions at Holy Name Medical Center (Holy Name), and her team recognized that the New Jersey-based freestanding Catholic hospital and health system needed a much broader EHR solution than EHR vendors could provide.
“The big box, off-the-shelf EHRs do claim to offer an enterprise solution, but we've never seen it work for us here at Holy Name,” Cox told Healthcare Strategies.
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Holy Name wanted an EHR solution that addressed the acute care setting, the ambulatory setting, and the emergency department but also a platform that could incorporate human resources functions and that supported patient outreach.
Given the level of granularity required for such a platform, the health system brought in a chief information officer with vendor experience in order to customize its own EHR solution.
Under this new leadership, the health system has learned a great deal about how to advance customized EHR solutions and also leveraged the organization's previous experience with customizing EHR solutions.
One major challenge that Cox and her team faced occurred when the coronavirus pandemic struck the US. This presented technical challenges as Holy Name lost some of its business and development teams.
Additionally, the healthcare leaders who were providing oversight for Cox’s team had to fix their attention on the very demanding workload and were less available for feedback.
Moreover, the team had to work to gain the trust of its vendor partners and other Holy Name employees.
“Early on, certainly, we had to prove ourselves. We had to show those vendor partners and even some of our colleagues here at the hospital that this is the real deal and that we were serious about meeting our timeline, about getting this product off the ground and into their hands,” Cox explained.
But once the tool was in clinicians’ hands, Cox said, the product felt like it had been around for a long time. Less than a year into the EHR implementation, the emergency department had already seen improvements in throughput, transitioning patients more quickly from sitting in the waiting room to seeing a physician.
Sign-offs on providers’ charts have also become more efficient, reducing the time it takes to get a return on the claims.
“We feel like there are a lot of opportunities to improve patient safety, usability, and clinician experience. But it's going to take a little time to get there,” Cox shared.
