June 06, 2012
Am I logged into my EHR? Maybe.
Magruder
Hospital is a critical access
hospital serving the residents in Ottawa County, Ohio. We’ve made a commitment
to improving the health of the community we serve through innovation and
adoption of new technologies. Through this, we’ve earned The Joint Commission’s
Gold Seal of Approval by demonstrating continual compliance with
national standards for health care quality and safety.
When we began implementing our electronic health record (EHR) system, we knew we needed to look at ways to
optimize the experience for clinicians in order to make it easier for them to
adopt the system. One aspect we targeted was the login process, which typically
includes several different login and authentication steps before you can reach
the patient’s chart. Streamlining this process was vital, as I’ve done other
go-lives where the hardest problem was getting people
to learn how to login.
We worked with Cerner to implement a single sign-on process, which we were able to integrate with our Smart Room technology. Using real-time location system (RTLS) badges, the
integration facilitates presence detection, which automatically unlocks and
locks the workstation when a clinician enters or exits the room. Basically, a
clinician walks into the room, the proximity technology picks them up, and then
they can put their finger on the fingerprint reader and they have instant
access to the patient chart. By walking out of the room, users can
automatically lock their session and thereby enhance the security and privacy
of the patient records. This walk-away security helps to optimize clinician
workflow while also ensuring proper security and HIPAA compliance.
Simplifying the login process helped us in during our EHR
transition in several ways. It increased adoption because
it removed the roadblocks of traditional login problems. It also increased
efficiency. Without using the solution to automate logins, users were prompted
three times for a user name and password in order to access the EHR
applications, taking at least an additional 40 seconds. This time savings adds up quickly as clinicians are required to access many applications several times throughout a shift. Finally, the login process helped expedite our required computerized physician order entry (CPOE) authentications, as current state regulations require a re-authentication prior to completing a medication order. Since a login password is not an approved re-authentication method, users would typically be required to answer a series of questions or follow another process for identification. Our clinicians use the fingerprint scanner to re-authenticate, expediting the medication order process while complying with state regulations.
As clinicians need to access patient data at different points in
their workflows, the system provides seamless access to the data using the role
and venue of access. That means our clinicians can get right down and start
working with the patient chart, not figure out if they’re logging in correctly.
Chuck lead Magruder
Hospital’s all-digital Smart Hospital EHR implementation project. He’s a
graduate of Youngstown State University.