Some electronic health record (EHR) implementations proceed on schedule with full involvement of their participants and achieve their goals. Others flounder, stall or struggle, experiencing only partial success or, in extreme cases, no success at all. What accounts for the difference? Is it a problem with the people, the process or the EHR product? How are large-practice implementations differe...

We conducted case studies of fourteen solo or small-group primary care practices using electronic health record (EHR) software from two vendors. Initial EHR costs averaged $44,000 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) provider, and ongoing costs averaged $8,500 per provider per year. The average practice paid for its EHR costs in 2.5 years and profited handsomely after that; however, some practices co...

Collecting and monitoring performance measure data are resource-intensive, requiring time and effort by a team that includes health care providers treating the patients and documenting their care, quality personnel monitoring and working to optimize performance rates, and quality abstractors, who extract information from the medical record. Recently, an additional group of people have become in...

THE INNOVATION The electronic health record (EHR) brings tremendous advantages, but it also poses sizeable challenges for the medical profession. Its demands can overburden physicians, and increasingly complex patient care requires a new approach. Acknowledging this and preparing for the impending change to value-based care, Bellin Health has embarked on a systemwide transformation to advanced ...

Laboratory results provide necessary information for the management of ambulatory patients. To realize the benefits of an electronic health record (EHR) and coded laboratory data (e.g., decision support and improved data access and display), results from laboratories that are external to the health care enterprise need to be integrated with internal results. We describe the development and clin...

Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) was launched in 2001 following an agreement by Canada’s First Ministers to strengthen a Canada-wide health infostructure that would include the development and benefits of electronic healthcare solutions. With a goal to have an electronic health record (EHR) for 50% of all Canadians by population by 2010, Infoway is investing in some key areas of health informati...

OBJECTIVE To assess intensive care unit (ICU) nurses' acceptance of electronic health records (EHR) technology and examine the relationship between EHR design, implementation factors, and nurse acceptance. DESIGN The authors analyzed data from two cross-sectional survey questionnaires distributed to nurses working in four ICUs at a northeastern US regional medical center, 3 months and 12 mont...

The promise of electronic decision support to promote evidence based practice remains elusive in the context of chronic disease management. We examine the problem of achieving a close relationship of Electronic Health Record (EHR) content to other components of a clinical information system (guidelines, decision support and workflow), particularly linking the decisions made by providers back to...

BACKGROUND Annual influenza epidemics significantly burden health care. Anticipating them allows for timely preparation. The Scientific Institute of Public Health in Belgium (WIV-ISP) monitors the incidence of influenza and influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) and reports on a weekly basis. General practitioners working in out-of-hour cooperatives (OOH GPCs) register diagnoses of ILIs in an instantl...