Shaker Cabinet:Woodgrain Vinyl::"niche" ED system:HIS ED module
At the EDIS Symposium each year, a big question for attendees is “should we install the ED module of our hospital-wide information system (HIS), or should we install a ‘niche’ system that’s designed specifically for the ED?”
Traditional wisdom has it that the “niche” systems, also known as “best-of-breed,” will work better than the ED-specific module of a big HIS. This is true. Surveys by KLAS show this, and certainly my personal experiences with four or five different EDISs bears this out.
However, there are reasons why the ED module of a HIS can actually be better, at least in some ways, than a dedicated niche/best-of-breed ED system – integration. For instance, where I worked in the ED at Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh (~60,000/year ED visits, Level I Trauma/Burn/tertiary care teaching center), we had Wellsoft, the KLAS top-ranked niche EDIS. We used it for tracking, nurse charting but not physician charting (we use Dictaphone EWS for physician charting), and a whole host of other purposes in the ED. It was extremely well-liked by all. However, the hospital was doing poorly (in financial terms) and it merged with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, becoming UPMC Mercy. The ED was forced to abandon Wellsoft and adopt Cerner FirstNet, the ED tracking module of the UPMC-wide Cerner HIS. Users complained about this “downgrade” and of how “klunky” FirstNet was compared to Wellsoft – and indeed this is borne out by FirstNet having a much lower KLAS rating than Wellsoft. Read the rest of this entry
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