Case/Scenario

You were just hired to be the Administrative Officer for a very large physicians practice: 10 doctors, hundreds of patients, nursing staff 10, administrative staff of 10, and one IT manager (general family practice). The Board of the practice decided to go "paperless" and realized that this would require a major effort-and that the Administrative Officer (because you are so seasoned) needed to direct this effort to make this happen.

Such a change meant the utilization of electronic health records (EHRs-major IT effort), which allow information to be readily communicated and shared among healthcare providers. It has been advocated as a means of improving quality care and helping to control healthcare costs over the long term. Yet, hastened implementation of healthcare IT requires considerable cost incursion in the near term and will present various other challenges that must be addressed. At this time, the Board has decided to only go with electronic health records-not the full-blown decision packages that are being developed/offered with some systems (systems that give advice on how to treat various ailments based).

Though the physicians know this is happening in all practices, several of them don't like the idea. Some of the nurses and administrative staff are against it (they have put a lot of time and effort into the paper-file system), yet most of them are positive because they realize the benefits long-term and will prevent "tracking down the doctor" when you can't read the records.

Since this practice never invested in good technology, the implementation will require a total system overhaul that everyone will have to learn and master.

How will you go about this change?