NURS FPX 6426 Assessment 2 Needs Assessment Meeting with Stakeholders

Needs Assessment Meeting with Stakeholders

Student name

Capella University

NURS-FPX 6426

Professor name

Submission date

Introduction

My name is _____, and I am the leader of the assessment and implementation of a new electronic health record (EHR) system in Mercy Medical Center. The effort will focus on substituting the current EHR technology of the organization, which is more than 12 years old and has failed to address the ever-evolving needs of patients, providers, and healthcare operations (Scalia et al., 2021).

Mercy Medical Center is a 400-bed acute care, not-for-profit hospital in the city with vastly diverse patients, including low-income families, older adults, and those with low English proficiency. The organization provides a wide variety of services, including emergency, inpatient, and outpatient care, surgery, maternity, mental health services, and telehealth. As the organization strives to offer high-quality care, which is safe, equitable, and patient-centered, Mercy has realized the importance of adopting modern technologies that can make a difference in assisting with clinical decision making, improving communication, and achieving better patient outcomes.

The proposed project presupposes the introduction of complete interoperability of the EHR system, which will help healthcare workers to access patient information and record it on different mobile devices. The system will also improve the information exchange between the system and the community healthcare partners, and will provide clinicians with access to crucial clinical information more easily (Alsalamah et al., 2025).

The main objectives of this project are to ensure efficiency in workflow, minimize technology-based obstacles, ensure patient safety, and assist healthcare professionals with their daily practice. Its implementation will take 18 months, during which the stakeholder engagement, the new system integration, training of staff, testing, and full implementation of the new EHR system will be in place by April 2027.

Connection Between Organizational Vision and Information System Change

The suggested EHR upgrade will directly aid the efforts of the Mercy Medical Center in terms of delivering high-quality, equitable, and patient-centered care. Since the healthcare technology is changing, the organization understands the necessity to upgrade its 12-year-old electronic health record to a new interoperable system to address the needs of patients, clinicians, and administrators (Scalia et al., 2021). With the implementation of the new system, the healthcare teams will be able to provide more efficient, safer, and better-coordinated care. The new system will also enhance the use of telehealth services, which will enhance ease of access and convenience of healthcare to patients.

In addition to direct patient care, the new EHR will also support the organization’s capability to gather and analyze health information to facilitate the initiative towards improving quality and supporting research initiatives, as well as to provide patient population health management efforts. More accurate and timely information will be provided to administrators, and, therefore, will help them to make decisions more efficiently and report better. Finally, the proposed technology investment will be aimed at sealing current gaps in care provision, enhancing the efficiency of its operations, and leading to enhanced health outcomes within the communities where Mercy conducts its operations.

Current Situation and Desired State Assessment

There are several issues with the EHR currently used by Mercy Medical Center that make it less efficient and not safe for the patient. Slow and has no support from providers. Staff are not infrequently using paper notes and/or repeat entries, which leads to delays and inaccuracies. Gaps in data capturing for Quality Reporting, Research, and Population Health (Mwanza et al., 2023) are also present.

However, it does provide a means for easy record keeping, retrieval, communication, and bill creation that meets regulations (Hertzum et al., 2022). But they’re costly to maintain and keep you from productivity due to inefficiencies and customer costs. The upgrade is expected to cost $5-8 million, and stakeholders have hoped that it will save them money later on due to minimal human error, accurate billing, and few readmissions (Mwanza et al., 2023). They would like to see a system that is cloud-based, AI-enabled, utilized throughout the locations, wearables, and patient and care-centric.

Risk Assessment and Mitigation

The way that Mercy Medical Centre currently keeps track of its patients’ records using an Electronic Health Record System (EHR) is inconsistent with organisational needs and limitations. There is a lack of functionality in terms of performance time, limited interoperability with external providers, and duplication of documentation for data entry when filling out paperwork and electronic documentation, which leads to documentation errors, delay in collecting data for quality control, research data collection, and population health initiatives as well (Mwanza et al. 2023).

Whilst the current EHR system can still be leveraged, over the years, the usage of such systems has grown not only in costs, but in ineffective use (Hertzum et al, 2022). Stakeholders wish the new EHR to be cloud-based and AI-driven, as well as to be interoperable with varied health care environments–including wearable technology and Telehealth.

The project will have the following areas of cybersecurity: Reducing risk of implementation will involve the following: The project will require a gradual approach to the project, working with staff, allowing staff to ease themselves into the project and not be disrupted by it, and full training of all staff members.

Evidence-Based Practice Standards

The new EHR system will be implemented using tested methods to enhance patients’ safety and accurate continuity of care. A uniform method for documenting patient records, along with regular audits of the EHR system, will lessen errors in documentation and increase the quality of information recorded; thus increasing the quality of the decisions made through the information recorded in the EHR.

The EHR will give the ability to securely transport information to other providers to ensure that Patients receive better services when linked as a coordinated team. The new EHR will also feature tools that will facilitate home health care, telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and tools that will identify gaps and delays in patient care. As a result, Mercy will provide more services to more people — particularly to those who do not speak English (Blount et al., 2023). The expansions bolster Mercy’s efforts in delivering patient-centered and fair services.

Technology Functionality Requirements

Multiple stakeholders have provided their input about the new EHR system. They have pinpointed some of the biggest needs for the platform, such as mobile functions, telehealth, secure cloud storage, and interoperability with other healthcare players, such as a pharmacist, a clinic, a specialist, and other providers in the healthcare chain. Multilingual patient portals, mobile applications, and clinical decision support systems to enhance patient care are other desirable elements (Solomou et al., 2020).

The estimated cost will be around $2,000,000 due to the software, hardware, and staff training that will be required to implement the new EHR system. The initial cost of this system will be followed by ongoing maintenance and periodic upgrades, which will increase the long-term expenses of the system but should improve efficiency, minimize errors, support better clinical decision making, and promote better patient engagement. Immediate financial and clinical benefits from the investment will be gained in the first two years after implementation.

Fiscal Impact of Information and Communication Technologies

The total expense, including purchase, installation, integration, and training for the user to get the new EHR system, will range from $5 million to $8 million for the organisation. The organisation believes such an EHR system will provide a great benefit in the forthcoming years in terms of operational efficiencies, lowering the rates of documentation errors, better accuracy in payments made for the services provided, and better patient care provided. There are also long-term cost savings to be gained in a reduction in unhelpful provision of unnecessary medical services, as well as diminished avoidable healthcare costs incurred, and an improvement in patient satisfaction (Solomou et al., 2025).

Communication Technology and Health Literacy

Patient communication technologies are vital for patients to access, understand, and effectively manage their health information. Mercy Medical Center will assess how successful the new EHR system is by measuring the number of times patients use the patient portal, their satisfaction through surveys, and technical assistance requests.

By monitoring these various indicators, they will have measures of how easily patients can use the technology to access their data and interact with their providers. The new EHR will also support a patient’s ability to improve health literacy and encourage them to become more involved in making healthcare-related decisions through better access to information and communication technologies.

Patient education materials will be accessible, written at a 6th – 8th grade level, and available in multiple languages. The Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC) will be a critical voice in the review of patient education materials and whether they are accessible to patients who may have low literacy and/or are not English-speaking. Equity expresses itself through the hospital’s vision – teamwork. These new methods of communicating must help to reduce health literacy barriers and not add to them.

Workflow and Communication Enhancement

With the adoption of EHR, Mercy Medical Center’s health care staff will have better time management and staff coordination. E-prescribing will help providers to work more efficiently and enhance the quality and safety of healthcare. Secure messaging will enable communication with providers to be faster, lab documents and decision support content for providers to be rapidly available, and tools that will help to minimize delays and increase timely access to care.

The patients will feel the advantage in other patients’ providers who will be able to access their information in pharmacies or clinics, which will save them from the fragmentation of care and ensure patient safety (Li et al., 2022). Paper medical records, SMS notification in case of changes, and backup servers: staff will be prepared to use backup systems in case there is a problem, having been trained for one year and having completed all their tests.

Benefits and Challenges of Health Information System Change

The new electronic health record (EHR) System should offer a great deal of value for both patients and providers by increasing efficiency, enhancing patient safety, improving team-based communications with providers and co-workers, and streamlining how people access health care. In addition, these benefits are accompanied by drawbacks such as start-up expenses, employee resistance to change, and staff training needs for their different positions (Hubbart 2023). The challenges above will need to be overcome or addressed to maximize the realization of the new health information system.

Data Capture Improvements

With the new EHR, Mercy Medical Center will have an improved ability to capture important data and monitor key health care trends. It will also provide automated tracking of chronic disease management, infection control, and readmissions, giving clinical and administrative personnel real-time information to make impactful interventions – at the right time.

Encrypting IP addresses, VPN, and multi-factor authentication will ensure data is securely stored in the cloud and comply with HIPAA (Hubbart, 2023). All those safeguards will go a long way to reduce the likelihood of intrusions and security infringements. Violations will be addressed with such measures as assigning responsibility, retraining of staff, and fines. Thus, someone can be held responsible for their actions, assisted in improving, and, of course, ensure that a culture of data security is upheld.

Practice and Outcome Enhancement

The Mercy Medical Centre will be improved with new electronic health records (EHR). Alerts will be sent in real-time to avoid the occurrence of a significant number of adverse events since the information about allergy or drug-to-drug interactions is supported by the decision. Telehealth kiosks in rural areas and offering multilingual ports will contribute to the enhancement of access and, therefore, equity between people.

It has been proven that a 20% decrease in duplicate tests, 15% rise in patient satisfaction, and enhanced controls over chronic diseases by the age of interventions (in other words, the new EHR system has demonstrated the capacity to reduce error fines, maximize ROI, and resource utilisation) have increased.

Change Management Principles for Resistance Mitigation

Risk of change, steep learning curve with new technology, and time risk of training are some of the risks that are common. To overcome these challenges, the application of several principles of change management will be used to help in the implementation process. It will be implemented by following the Kotter 8-Step Model by focusing on creating a sense of urgency, leadership, short-term wins, and cultural change within the hospital.

Shared governance will bring in a sense of ownership of the process by the nurses and clinicians (Monkman & Lesselroth, 2025). Staff will be supported by trained “champions” in each unit using the super-user model. The other measures include open communication, a gradual implementation, and incentives to adopt it.

Conclusion

The EHR used by Mercy Medical Center is old and ineffective and has threatened the running and safety of patients. Stakeholders are seeking a way to transform it to a safe, interoperable, and easy-to-use system that will yield improved access and results. This is going to be a costly investment, yet one that will save money in the long-term, enhance safety, and increase quality of care. This change is a part of Mercy’s mission of patient-centred and equitable care. Continuing to engage the staff, picking the vendor, and phasing in are all the subsequent steps to achieve a successful outcome.

Next Assessment of this class: NURS FPX 6426 Assessment 3