Our hospital is changing its computer system to PAS. Should the Accident & Emergency Department independently go paperless? Does anyone have experienc

Hello

I would be very grateful for some information regarding computer systems.
Does anyone know of an Emergency Department that uses an electronic medical record and has gone completely paperless?
Or an ED that considered going paperless but then decided against it and still uses a card- what was the reason for the change of direction?

We are currently considering going paperless but i am led to believe that from a systems and processes point of view that is not a good idea. However, as it is the computer company that is giving me this information I wondered whether this is really the case.

Answers

Yes, it should go EMR SYSTEM, BUT work processes must be carefully thought through, mapped and redesigned.

In a trauma situation you do not want to discover that now you have to go through 28 computer screens and take 3 minutes to document a STAT drug you need to be tubed from pharmacy,

By definition, two points should be obvious:
1) the vendor sells and supports software and does not know your ED team's processes
2) everyone in the ED already has a full-time job - they have niether the time nor prior experience to implement a comprehensive HIT project that will alter every single ED work flow.

Thus, a cost of the project MUST be experienced, contracted EMR implementation consultanlts or patients can die and the project can fail.