DVU EHR System Discussion

Valley View Hospital System serves a population of about 200,000. The main campus hospital has 120 beds, and the other has 100 beds. Both hospitals use the same health information systems vendor, Cerner for some of the systems but do not have a complete EHR system and are not networked to exchange patient data. Those systems are somewhat old and include registration, nursing notes, medication administration, and physician order entry. Other ancillary systems, such as the clinical laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, and dietary, are different in each hospital (some from Cerner and some from other vendors). Maintenance and Information System personnel costs for the disparate systems are unreasonably high, because the hospital system cannot capitalize on economies of scale. Information is not readily accessible for analysis for either business purposes or evaluation of quality of care. Strategically, the hospital knows that it must eliminate these information systems problems to provide quality care and to operate all its facilities efficiently and effectively. The first step toward meeting its strategic objectives is to develop an information system strategic plan.