The Place of EHR in the Hospital IT Ecosystem

I’ve been thinking a lot about EHR software and the part it plays in the hospital IT ecosystem. The $36 billion of EHR stimulus money has shined a big light on EHR software. No doubt the EHR incentive money has increased EHR adoption, but at what cost. I wonder if the EHR incentive money has caused many hospital IT teams to place undue emphasis on the EHR software.

The reality of a hospital IT ecosystem is that they usually have hundreds of healthcare IT systems in their organization. The EHR is just one of those systems. In fact, it might not even be the largest system. Their ERP system (usually Peoplesoft or SAP in large hospitals) could be larger. However, try being system #90 at a hospital. Do you think the IT people at a large hospital system are paying much attention to what’s happening to that system? Not only are they distracted chasing the EHR incentive money, but even without that incentive there are 89 other systems in front of it.

I’m reminded of this Healthcare CIO Mindmap that I posted previously. It’s a great image of the amazing complexity that a healthcare CIO is facing. Each of the branches on that mindmap represent one or more IT systems that have to be managed by an organization. That’s a complex and challenging task.

I guess my message here is that while the EHR is extremely important to an organization, don’t lose track of all the other healthcare IT systems you support. They won’t likely be noticed in the short term, but transgressing these smaller health IT systems will create organizational debt that will be hard to overcome in the future.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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