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The Implementation of Operational Processes for the Alberta Electronic Health Record: Lessons for Electronic Medical Record Adoption in Primary Care
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Doucette, Dave |
| Copyright Year | 2009 |
| Abstract | Rapid and foundational change is underway in health jurisdictions around the world as they adopt electronic medical records, interdisciplinary teams and jurisdictional electronic health records (EHRs) to mitigate the intense care needs and health risks brought on by an aging population. The Canadian province of Alberta is no exception. Alberta has encountered adverse events because of a lack of coordination in its EHR software operations. Alberta’s EHR implementation team adopted the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, which uses best practice concepts for managing information technology operations to mitigate such risks. The team has learnt several lessons that are applicable to the adoption of health information systems in other care domains. A cautious approach, using pilots, standards and input from non-physician clinical and administrative staff, facilitates system adoption. This paper illustrates the software operations issues encountered by the EHR implementation team and the approaches taken to address these issues, and extrapolates these lessons to adopters of health information technology. Introduction The Canadian province of Alberta is implementing strategies to assist healthcare providers in delivering care to an aging population. Alberta is managing the disparity between healthcare demand by an aging population and the capacity to supply care by adopting interdisciplinary team approaches to care (known as primary care networks [PCNs]) (Primary Care Initiative n.d.), electronic medical records (EMRs) and a provincial electronic health record (EHR). Such approaches imply significant change to the healthcare system and the role of physicians. The purpose of this case study is to report the authors’ experiences of implementing the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) software operations management framework for provincial EHRs. The lead author, who now manages a PCN, has realized that the lessons learned at the provincial level also apply to the implementation of PCNs and EMRs. The implementation of EHRs, PCNs and EMRs involves team-based change-management concepts. This article does not advocate for the adoption of software operations management in physician offices, but rather extends the experience of implementing operational change at the provincial level to implementing information technology adoption in other domains of care. Background Alberta chose to implement the architectural design recommended by Canada Health Infoway (Canada Health Infoway 2006), starting with the laboratory and drug information systems. However, Alberta Health and Wellness (AHW) realized that the |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.longwoods.com/product/download/code/20570 |
| Volume Number | 7 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
