Clinton, Mo.-based Golden Valley Memorial Hospital recently deployed a new EHR — an often stressful process familiar to many hospital CIOs.
The hospital went live on its new EHR — a web-based platform developed by Meditech and called "Expanse" — Dec. 1. In a Nov. 26 announcement about the impending rollout, Golden Valley Memorial Hospital CEO Craig Thompson said staff had worked for several months to prepare for the go-live and that the hospital had invested millions into the new technology.
To document its EHR go-live, hospital staff live-tweeted the process from a Twitter account called "gvmh_expanse_emr," detailing each piece of the technology deployment, from preparatory work to ongoing optimization. The account's bio, which presents as if from the EHR itself, reads: "I am the new unified Electronic Medical Record System."
Ten Twitter highlights from Golden Valley Memorial Hospital's EHR go-live:
Nov. 3: "Right now we are converting lots and lots of data. Imagine moving your entire house to another address piece by piece. You have to decide what you want to keep and what you want to just start over on. I don't mean just moving your stuff ... the whole house."
Nov. 5: "Physician and nurse practitioner training starts this week. Cross your fingers!"
Nov. 11: "Increasing tension here as we get closer to going live. Tons of work to get done to smooth the transition. Constantly trying to come up with any scenarios unaccounted for. We won't find them all but it isn't for lack of trying."
Nov. 25: "Ok. Last day of rest. Full speed ahead. Pulling some straggler demographics out of the old outpatient system today. Will make one more run at it Friday."
Nov. 29: "Tomorrow we work on shutting down the old systems and bringing the new system online. There are many connections that need to take place. We have done quite a bit of testing to make sure that goes well."
Dec. 1: "We are Live!!"
Dec. 5: "Incidents as of this a.m.: 270 complete. Only two open and the rest are assigned."
Dec. 10: "Smooth through the weekend. Rev cycle work this week. Tying up some loose ends. Then post-live optimization work."
Dec. 12: "Whew! Long day with some fires to put out. IT is slaving away trying to get quick wins and improvements as we move to stable. Got some good ones today! 98 percent physician electronic documentation. The plan is coming together for us and our patients."
Dec. 21: "We are transitioning from stabilization to post-live optimization. ... I really believe this post-live period will be crucial to real efficiencies and improvements. The plan is to for [sic] exceed previous ability in patient convenience, safety and quality, staff and provider efficiency and satisfaction, and organizationally arrive at a productivity plateau far higher than the past."
To access the Twitter account, click here.