Healthcare organizations have spent a considerable amount of time working on Electronic Health Records (EHR) and have come to the conclusion that its implementation is only the beginning of a long and tough journey of optimization and data governance.

Even tough health IT tools are tailormade for organizations, maintaining data integrity along with keeping workflows smooth and streamlined for physicians and nurses is the biggest challenge for the industry.

Lisa Grisim, RN, MSN, Associate Chief Information Officer at Stanford Children’s Health mentions that the journey of implementation evolves over a period of time as users become more experienced with the system. Governing the journey is vital to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of EHR.

Stanford Children’s Health began its EHR journey with an Epic implementation in 2014. The new software introduced many benefits but, it left them with the task of developing paediatric specific content on its own before it could maximize the new technology.

A large group of physician informaticists and physician champions were needed to make the most of the implementation. Along with the content knowledge of the speciality, they also assisted to engage colleagues from varied disciplines to ensure that everyone had indepth knowledge. This in-house knowledge has led to wonderful things. Grisim said mostly nurses from each unit added uniqueness to the knowledge and workflows during the implementation of EHR.

A collaborative data governance structure involving nurse and physicians can lead to meaningful EHR optimization.