The OhioHealth Community Connect Ambulatory Program
The OhioHealth Community Connect Ambulatory Program is an Epic form of EHR plan in OhioHealth facility. The facility’s plan was implemented based on establishing a connection with the community partners for successful care (Silow-Carroll et al. 2012). The health facility chose this EHR to ensure the availability of clinical records in line with its mission to improve the health of the patients. Therefore, the Community Connect strengthens the care of the patients.
System Implementation
The implementation phase of the system takes about 160 days, where the physician practice teams make several milestones. In each milestone, the units are assigned responsibilities and activities to complete within a given time frame (Silow-Carroll et al. 2012). The main activities include the initial training, definition of services such as implementation, hosting deployment, recommended practices and designation of Ohio representatives.
Initial training is done to the authorized users regarding the access and application of the EHR system. According to the recommended practices of the system, qualified personnel is required to meet a required number of hours depending on the authorized role (Meeks et al. 2014). The mode of training implies that the initial training on each worker relies on their role in the health facility. However, further training is offered to successful candidates.
OhioHealth deploys both hardware and software to the centres necessary for Hosting services. The health facility team assist the hosts on the initial stages of the EHR operation within the new Practice (Authorized user of the EHR) location to ensure that the EHR system operates according to the implementation plan (Meeks et al. 2014). Also, the OhioHealth facility designates a project manager to liaise between the Practice and the OhioHealth representative.
The Practice maintains the equipment, although the initial procurement is done solely by the OhioHealth facility. However, the standardization of the material across all the Practices is done by OhioHealth facility (Meeks et al. 2014). In this view, the facility has the responsibility to update both the equipment and the software used at its Practices on its expense. OhioHealth uses reasonable efforts to keep the Practice up-to-date on any changes.
Meaningful Use
The platform acts as an aid for the achievement of important objectives. For instance, through the software, OhioHealth shares specialized tools, resources and work-flows that assist the physician in executing their duties, thus ensuring efficient customer service (Silow-Carroll et al. 2012). For example, it provides electronic communication within the EHR system by transferring secured clinical data and records. Also, the program offers documentations which are essential during auditing. However, it remains the responsibility of a user to ensure total eligibility for any attestations provided by the system.
References
Meeks, D. W., Takian, A., Sittig, D. F., Singh, H., & Barber, N. (2014). Exploring the sociotechnical intersection of patient safety and electronic health record implementation. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(e1), e28-e34.
Silow-Carroll, S., Edwards, J. N., & Rodin, D. (2012). Using electronic health records to improve quality and efficiency: the experiences of leading hospitals. Issue Brief (Commonw Fund), 17(1), 40.