Implementing a Successful EMR
The Challenge
The medical center was about to implement its own EMR—a comprehensive, new electronic medical record (EMR) system—across all departments. A conversion of this magnitude would typically impact all of the facility’s clinicians as they learned the new system and a new set of processes. The facility’s administrators and nursing leadership worked hard to overcome the clinical challenges that came with the implementation.
Fairview identified the following objectives for the EMR conversion period:
- Maintaining patient volume, care quality, and satisfaction throughout the implementation
- Ensuring no loss of productivity during the conversion – an estimated 20% more nurses would be needed for a 4-week period across all shifts to offset the risk
- Getting 225 qualified, temporary nurses on site less than two months after the staffing contract was awarded
- Diverting resources to cover the estimated 8+ weeks in time needed to internally, recruit, onboard and oversee the hiring of 225 temporary nurses for the implementation
The Solution
AMN Healthcare’s dedicated clinical implementation EMR team partnered with Fairview hospital staff early on to help determine their needs, share expertise from past conversion projects and to plan a course of action. AMN set to work to recruit, and place, 225 EMR-experienced nurses with unit-specific skills at the facility.
AMN Helped Fairview By:
• Managing all the recruitment and onboarding details for the temporary staff, including interviewing, background and skill checks, credential verifications, hiring, licensure, housing, transportation, orientation, and scheduling
• Partnering with the University of Minnesota Medical Center to train 225 nurses on the hospital’s current records system and the custom Epic software solution prior to the conversion
• Helping with patient care by providing supplemental nurses for a 4-week period, before, during, and after the EMR system went live
•Providing two onsite project managers to handle all issues with the temporary nursing staff, allowing the facility’s managers to focus on their own nurses
The Results
The hospital’s staffing director reported that the entire engagement went better than expected. The Fairview staff was impressed with the quality of AMN’s nurses and the management team was very satisfied with the results. Success measures noted by Fairview, included:
• Patient satisfaction scores, which remained steady throughout the implementation, and key outcome measures, (such as infection rates, falls, etc.,) showed no change
• 98% of the temporary nurses met, or exceeded, the conversion project job requirements, allowing full-time staff to focus on learning the system
• AMN saved Fairview an estimated 338 hours (8-1/2 weeks) of recruiting time
• There were no delays in system implementation due to staffing issues
• EMR-trained, supplemental nurse staffing helped reduce end users’ adoption time
Contact Us
For a free assessment of your healthcare facilities staffing needs during EMR conversion periods, call 866.871.8519, or visit our website at www.amnhealthcare.com.
