The Impact of Nursing Informatics on Patient Outcomes and Patient Care Efficiencies

Big data and big data analytics applications in healthcare have improved the efficiency of patient treatment and the management of health (Batko & Ślęzak, 2022). In this article, I will present a proposed technology project to improve the efficiency of nursing care. I will also identify the stakeholders the proposed project will impact, expected patient outcomes, the project’s tech requirements, the project team, their roles, and how the nurse informaticist role will be integrated into the project team.

The Proposed Project

My healthcare organization is a part of a healthcare system with operations across 15 states and expanding. It provides general and specialized care across various fields. Currently, the health organization has employed electronic medical records (EMRs) and a laboratory information management system (LIMs) to help manage patient health information and other practice data. However, the EMRs and the LIMs have also been shown to have their drawbacks, especially in sharing data and information records across the facility and the health care system.

EMRs and LIMs have proved to be limited in their application settings. Sharing records across the health care organization from one practice requires the health professionals to either print them and have them hand-delivered to other departments or have them scanned and mailed. The lack of a centrally accessible records management system has reduced the efficiency of workflow and brought about various inconsistencies and delays in the delivery of patient care. Delayed care has been identified as a factor in disease progression, which might contribute to the progression into severe disease phenotypes (Mousa et al., 2020). This may lead to unnecessary costs of care and prolonged stays, which may impact patient experiences and failure to meet the goals of care.

The proposed project is to implement an electronic health records (EHR) system that provides a central records management system accessible to all facility departments and across the entire healthcare system at any given time. The proposed EHR project will eliminate the need for department-specialized information management systems as it will combine the various systems, such as EMRs, LIMs, and other systems employed at the organization, into one health information management system. Therefore, this project will seek to improve the efficiency of documentation, the sharing of data and other patient health records, and the accessibility of such data and records across the health facility and the health care system.

Stakeholders Impacted by This Project

There are various stakeholders, including all end-users of the EHRs, after full implementation. The first stakeholders whom the project will directly impact are the clinicians across the various departments. Clinicians who are currently used to the EMR systems will need to switch to the new EHRs, which may disrupt their practice as well as patient planning. The organization’s billing department is also among the key stakeholders who the project will impact. Other stakeholders include the laboratory department, the healthcare organization’s management, the care planners, the health records department team, and the staff management team. Additionally, implementing the proposed EHR will also impact external stakeholders such as healthcare insurance providers, suppliers, and other healthcare organizations that the facility collaborates with to improve care services. Most importantly, patients are the key stakeholders the project will directly impact as the implementation of the proposed EHRs is to improve the efficiency of patient care and will also be required to interact with the implemented information management systems.