Case study: Nurses drive MSHA EMR project

While it wasn't always the case in the past, nurses are playing an increasingly large role in shaping and rolling out EMR systems. That was definitely the case at Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA), which was aggressive enough to begin moving from paper records to EMR in 2001. MSHA's network includes 11 hospitals with 1,462 beds, 21 primary care centers and 13 outpatient clinics.

While physicians often run EMR deployments, this time chief nursing executive Kathryn Wilhoit oversaw the EMR rollout. In addition, 32 other nurses, including some involved in direct patient care, helped to select the vendor. Because the hands-on patient care nurses were paired with nurse IT specialists, clinical issues and IT issues got equal time, resulting in the consensus choice of a fully-integrated Web-based product from Siemens Medical Solutions.

For more information on the MSHA EMR implementation:
- read this article from Digital HealthCare & Productivity

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