Nursing Optimization at Eastern Maine

April Giard, NP-BC, NEA-BC, VP & Chief Nursing Information Officer, Eastern Maine Health System. Hospitals and clinicians have been trying to move beyond the implementation and adoption of technology to the stage of how technology can be meaningful in improving patient care, and to use the system in place to its fullest potential. Nursing is the largest group of healthcare professionals accounting for the greatest volume of EMR users. It was common in the past to customize the EMR to meet the local or unique workflows of a hospital, practice, or unit.  This has led to challenges in the ability to rapidly adopt new functionality, implement upgrades and standardize care.  EMHS underwent a six-month project to redesign the EMR in an effort to reduce nuisance alerts and duplicate documentation, streamline documentation within the nursing workflow and move to Cerner’s model system design.