Our Electronic Medical Record (EMR) team is celebrating one year since go-live!

Ward 1 and Kath Atkinson Wing (KAW-Aged) at Bundoora Centre were the first wards to go live with the EMR on 5 September 2023, with other wards and sites following suit throughout the month.

In just 12 months, the EMR has transformed how clinical care is provided to patients and the community Northern Health serves. The system is used for clinical documentation, placing orders, viewing results and medication management, all helping to deliver significant benefits to the way healthcare is provided.

Terri Fiorenza, EMR Director, said celebrating EMR’s first birthday was like celebrating your child’s first birthday and surviving the first year of parenthood.

“The EMR team feel a great sense of achievement in delivering a successful EMR implementation at Northern Health,” she said.

“Throughout the year, we have further developed EMR build skills to work on enhancing and improving the clinical information system in further supporting our clinicians, staff and patients.”

The past year has been an eventful one for the EMR team, with many milestones achieved. In December 2023, the EMR project was officially closed and in January 2024, the business as usual (BAU) EMR team was established.

While establishing an EMR BAU structure, the team also delivered additional projects including implementation of the Victorian Perinatal Data Collection Statutory Extract, Anatomical Pathology and a Radiology bi-directional interface.

A business case for EMR phase 2 projects including EMR implementation at Kilmore District Hospital, Craigieburn Centre expansion, Whittlesea Hospital and devices for HITH and GEM@Home was endorsed by the Northern Health Board. Work has commenced with Northern Health key stakeholders and our third party vendors Oracle (Cerner) and Health Technology Services (HTS) for this project implementation.

“EMR adoption from a staff perspective continues to improve as staff continue to use and become more familiar with the system,” Terri said.

“Northern Health patients were very patient when the clinical information system was first implemented, and staff were learning to navigate through the system.”

“Staff have come a long way since the initial go-live, and patients would now see this as a seamless task.”

Looking ahead, Terri says the team is aiming to upskill EMR Analysts in EMR build skills in all EMR solutions, so that the team can continue to prioritise and build optimisation and enhancement requests received by staff.

Implementation of projects including EMR phase 2 projects for Community Hospitals and Australian Immunisation Registry EMR integration are currently underway, as well as other projects.

EMR phase 3 projects will be scoped which will include Specialists Clinics Outpatients and Community. The EMR team will work closely with Northern Health key stakeholders, Oracle and HTS to scope the requirements for EMR implementation. Time and motion studies were completed pre go live, with a plan to revisit this analysis 18 months post go live to measure the benefits of the EMR.

“The EMR team thanks Northern Health staff for their support and patience post go-live as staff become more familiar with the EMR, and the EMR team continue to improve on their EMR build skills in improving the clinical information system for our staff and patients,” Terri said.