MEET THE EXPERT
Breaking Down the Technology Barrier How Healthcare IT Brings Patients and Clinicians Together
Healthcare organizations are looking to IT to gain efficiency, ease financial pressure, reduce medical errors, and—above all—to support their primary mission: to provide the best possible care for patients. In this issue of Meet the Expert, Dr. Cheryl Parker, RN, MSN, PhD, shares her thoughts on technologies that healthcare providers are embracing, what’s fueling the growth, and the benefits of implementing e-health applications. Dr. Parker has been a registered nurse for over 34 years, is the Senior Clinical Informatics Specialist for Motion Computing, and is a contributing faculty member in the Masters of Science in Nursing Program at Walden University.
Q: What are the top two or three trends that are having a major influence on the IT groups in healthcare organizations?
A: I think the two biggest are the concepts of meaningful use and the implementation of the electronic medical record. And the second one, from a clinician viewpoint, is the implementation of evidence-based practice and measurable outcomes.
Q: What do you see as some of the biggest challenges faced by health IT professionals, and how are these challenges shaping the IT priorities for larger healthcare organizations?
A: IT has become such a factor in delivery of patient care, that no matter
what your situation is, there’s got to be great communication—what’s happening, what’s coming, what to expect. In larger organizations, the IT department may be off-site. It may literally be in another city—especially if you’re in a large, integrated healthcare delivery system. [IT professionals] can’t just consider themselves the guys who live off campus or the guys who live in the basement. They’ve got to really make the effort to establish this communication pattern.
Q: What about regulations? HIPAA is obviously the biggest one impacting the healthcare industry, does IT know enough about what needs to be there?
A: I’ve been around for 34 years. It’s not like patient privacy formed when
HIPAA came out. I was taught patient privacy years ago. I think the biggest difference now is, instead of one patient’s chart that can be violated, it’s hundreds or thousands of them at a single shot. With one laptop from a case manager, you can lose information on a thousand patients. All of us in a healthcare organization, we’ve got to work together to make sure that we’re not doubling and tripling the work of the people doing the patient care…that we’re using IT appropriately…so that as a clinician is doing patient care, they’re able to capture the data that’s needed for all these reports without having to do more work.
My whole vision is: how do we make things better for the patients and the
solving IT one customer at a time™
Gov is all you need™
simplify IT™
www.pcconnection.com/health www.govconnection.com/health www.moredirect.com/healthcare
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36