UConn Health is now two months into a patient care transformation centered around an integrated electronic health record. As expected, it has been an adjustment period, but with the challenges come a number of success stories and early wins for the UConn Health community, including both providers and patients.
“We are in the early stages of our HealthONE journey,” says UConn Health Chief Information Officer Bruce Metz. “Go-live was only the beginning. We are starting to see some progress and benefits to patient care and efficiency that bode well for the future. The key is to stay on track by continuing to learn and refine HealthONE in order to realize all the capabilities it has to offer. Embracing the change with patience and foresight makes all the difference. It’s important to remember this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Here are some early reviews:
“I used to spend four hours writing notes. Now I only spend one hour writing notes.”
—Dr. Neha Jain, psychiatrist
“HealthONE is WAY better than Nextgen for doing orders/charts for the doctor. Takes me a quarter of the time to chart. Vast improvement!”
—Dr. Craig Rodner, orthopedic surgeon
“As an OR nurse, I love blood. With HealthONE, ordering blood is fast and easy! No more filling out lab slips, faxing and hoping that the fax made it to the blood bank. This is a huge improvement over our legacy system.”
—Ellen Benson, OR nurse manager
“Really happy about ‘No more writing and no more paper’ in the Phlebotomy Team Department! All work is accounted for individually.”
—Aretha Floyd, inpatient phlebotomist
“One of my studies requires an extra blood sample with the early morning labs and with the use of the ‘Treatment Team Sticky Note’ on the patient’s chart, this sample was obtained easily. This process would not have been as seamless without our new EHR.”
—Sharon DiMauro, clinical research coordinator
“It’s been great, especially for billing. We’re able to capture so much more now.”
—Dr. Heiko Schmitt, cardiologist
“Prior to go-live, it was not uncommon to have three or four different programs open in order to provide proper care to patients. Now only one is required. HealthONE has vastly improved patient continuity of care and efficiency of documentation.”
—Dr. Ben Ristau, urologic oncologist
“One of my principal orders trainers shared that a surgery resident recently commented that he was ‘pleased with the technology leap forward’ that UConn has taken. As a resident that has previous rotations at UConn prior to HealthONE implementation, he notes the application is a great improvement.”
—Liz Zibell, HealthONE clinical applications director