Teach a Topic: Steps and Limitations to Merge Electronic Health Records amongst several merged hospitals.

1. Merging
Electronic Health
Records (EHRs)
Presenter: Josette Pribilla
November 12, 2017

2. Learning Objectives
Students will learn the importance of merging EHRs in order to
analyze future mergers between hospitals and whether it would
benefit them.
Students will learn steps involved to merge EHRs in order to explain
the amount of work involved to complete such a task.

3. Merging into one EHR Snapshot
When hospitals merge, or are purchased, they may have several EHRs among each
entity. This allows for the option of merging into one central EHR for everyone.
This is used after a merger of two hospitals and dependant on what the enterprise
leaders believe will be the best solution to having numerous EHRs.
Hospitals who commonly need this are hospitals that recently acquired other smaller
hospitals or medical practices.

4. What is the benefit of knowing this?
Merging EHRs benefits:
-Cost Savings
-Standardized practice amongst all entities in the enterprise
-Improved patient safety and satisfaction

5. Merging an EHR
Choose one EHR vendor that also supports allied health software systems and interfaces.
Examples: Cerner, Epic, Meditech
Negotiate with the other hospitals that have joined on the vendor you choose to support the
EHR.
Get input from stakeholders before making big decisions
Find a list of vendors that will give prices that are satisfactory to everyone.
The process involves moving big data which is expensive
Testing: test fake scenarios that parallel real ones in a test environment from the time patient
arrives to billing when they leave.

6. Merging EHRs (continued)
Important to note on merging EHRs:
- Cost savings comes from consolidating servers, data, and maintenance
- Data must be directed to the proper interfaces from each entity in the health
system
- This streamlines steps of patient care that is consistent between all hospitals and
medical practices for all patients in the health system
- It can take over 12 months to complete
- Initially the creation of one EHR for several entities is expensive, but will save in
the future
- Merge patients with duplicate numbers in the prior system

7. The difficulties in merging EHRs
- Formatting differences between hospitals. Example birth date in DD/MM/YY and
YY/MM/DD
- Inconsistent and ambiguous pricing of services
- Entities changing their system features to fit their needs
- Making sure the data is being directed to the right interfaces without crashing
them.

8. In The News...
Challenges faced with merging EHRs

9. In The News...
Rural hospitals do not use advanced EHRs

10. Learning Objectives Review
Students will learn the importance of merging EHRs in order to
analyze future mergers between hospitals and whether it would
benefit them.
Students will learn steps involved to merge EHRs in order to explain
the amount of work involved to complete such a task.