This week we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Go-Live of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) at Monash Health.
The traditional gift for first anniversaries is paper, but thanks to the EMR, paper is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. That won’t stop us celebrating and acknowledging the careful planning, training, collaboration, and significant teamwork across the organisation in the roll-out and implementation of our EMR.
At this time last year, workstations on wheels (WOWs) were rolled in, EMR Users were logging on, favourites fairs and training were stepped out, and the first patient records were entered into the EMR.
From Dandenong to Clayton campus and on to Casey, Kingston, and Moorabbin the devices wheeled in like a ‘droid army’ foretelling how essential the EMR would become in delivering safe, high-quality and timely care. Over 900 WOWs, 152 Downtime Viewer Laptops, 450 Laptops on Trolleys, 97 Stand Alone Laptops, 300 Ruggedised Tablets, 33 PCs, 15 Tracking Boards, 503 Specimen Printers, 119 Barcode Printers, 3,686 Scanners were built, delivered and successfully set up. We were then ready for the careful transfer of over 1,200 patient records from paper onto the EMR during the three Go-lives.
EMR Fun Anniversary Fact:
If you extended the 900 WOWs to their full height and laid them end-to-end, they’d form a line 1,620 metres long – that’s 3.4 laps of the MCG!
Thanks to the tireless efforts of the EMR Program Team and our incredibly dedicated employees, the EMR is now firmly embedded at Monash Health (with over 14,000 active users) and an essential part of the delivery of care and positive outcomes for the community we serve. So much so that it is hard to believe it’s only been a year!
While there won’t be any large gatherings, cake, and WOWs playing party music, we hope everyone can take a moment to acknowledge and reflect on how far we have all come together with this transformational program.
In lieu of speeches, we asked some of our EMR team leaders for their thoughts about the journey over the past year.
“The transition to our electronic medical record has been tremendously smooth and our clinicians and non-clinical employees have adapted unbelievably fast to the new system. We are now digitally enabled to take full advantage of the power of the EMR and the rich data it provides to innovate and pursue excellence in safe, quality care. With the current pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic we are all very relieved to have our system in place to support clinical care and our operational needs.
- Jane Ross, EMR Director, Advancing Care
“Over the last 12 months, it’s been fascinating to watch the growth of the EMR from novelty or stressor to a core part of clinical practice at Monash Health. I’m most excited by the number of clinicians of all disciplines who come to us with great ideas for improvement and innovation – this will drive the evolution of the EMR into the future”
- Michael Franco, Deputy Chief Medical Information Officer, Medical Oncologist & Palliative Care Physician
“It has been an extraordinary year since the introduction of the EMR at Monash Health changed our workflows and enabled us to document care as we provide it. Congratulations to all of our employees who have ensured this success which now enables us to proactively respond to documentation changes such as those for the COVID19 pandemic.”
- Naomi Dobroff, Chief Nursing and Midwifery Information Officer
“In reflecting on the highlights of the first year of the Monash Health EMR, the stand out for me has been how effectively the system has been embraced and integrated into the daily work lives of staff members across all disciplines. I have also been continually impressed by the level of engagement our workforce has maintained in the EMR design to allow responsive improvements to the system which ensure we provide safe and timely care to our patients. With our new completely digital training model we have delivered key workflow webinars to a number of areas and look forward to continuing this level of support.”
- Denise Owen, Director, Digital Health Training and Adoption.