The UCLA Medical Center will be posting more than $100 million to update its existing electronic medical records, transforming them into a cohesive and integrated system.
This update will address the problem of the large amount of patient paperwork and redundant questions that characterize the typical trip to the doctor’s office.
David Feinberg, chief executive officer and associate vice chancellor of the UCLA Medical Center, said he envisions this as having an extremely positive impact on doctors and patients alike.
Once the update is completed, complete medical histories will be able to be electronically transferred throughout all of the center’s branches so patients will no longer have to repeatedly fill out similar paperwork.
The new system will mainly constitute changes in medical software, Feinberg said. As a result, there will be very few new pieces of hardware installed in the hospital, he added.
Currently, the center is in the process of choosing a consulting firm that will complete a full-scale assessment of the hospital system and will make recommendations to what software company solution best suits its individual needs, said Virginia McFerran, chief information officer for UCLA Health System.
McFerran said the cost of the project stems from labor for implementation of the system, extensive multiple-level training for the staff and the cost of software and potential hardware integration.
She said the $100 million is a low estimate based on those factors, but the actual cost could fluctuate depending on numerous factors including how the labor structure is organized and how far the current UCLA system is from the ideal integration.
A full rollout of the system is expected in five to seven years, McFerran said.
Increased safety will be a characteristic of the new system, Feinberg said. Recalled medicine, he added, could be pulled from patient use immediately.
Dr. Michael Pfeffer, who works as a hospitalist at the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center, said he is excited for the new system to come into effect, and he anticipates a positive impact on his workflow and productivity.
The most useful element of the update, Pfeffer said, will be automated computer order entry, which documents the entire plan of care for a patient. Thus far they have been written by hand, and he said automating the system would simplify the process and make it much quicker.
Other than being bombarded by less paperwork, Pfeffer said once the system progresses it could allow doctors to spend more time with patients.
McFerran said the biggest challenge with implementation was going to be the doctors’ resistance to change.
“It is hard for the physicians because at first there is both the challenge of letting go of something you know and has worked for years, and the challenges you have in adopting something new,” McFerran said.
She said electronic medical records could mean a shorter lag time between meaningful results in research and the ability for that research to be employed in the clinic, but added that this development is more than five years away.
The 2009 federal stimulus package contains incentives for medical centers to update their electronic record-keeping systems and assesses penalties for not meeting minimum time-frame requirements.
McFerran said this played into the rationale behind moving quickly with the large update.
“I think that the federal incentives have inspired us to move as quickly as possible,” McFerran said. “Yet, the wisdom around the clinical table and among the chairs and among the leadership of the hospital is that we need an integrated electronic medical record no matter what.”
The big picture for Feinberg is not only an integrated system across UCLA, but one that makes sharing of electronic medical records possible between hospitals and across state lines.
Feinberg said the medical field is going through a similar transformation that has characterized the banking and airline industry, one that will allow data management on an unparalleled scale, where medical research uses aggregated data that was once never thought possible.