Implementing Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in Apollo Hospital

Project Management 1
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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Project Management 2
Company Overview
Apollo hospital has been ranked among the top best Asian hospitals and among some
of the few hospitals that have embraced and leveraged different technological trends with a
view to facilitative effective and seamless healthcare delivery. However, there are a number
of technologies that the hospital needs to adopt with a view to increase efficiency, improve
patient-staff communication and also to improve patient data recording and privacy within
the organization. The organization still relies on paper documentation as their main record-
keeping method. However, given the nature of technology today, there are several methods of
keeping patient data some of which are digital (Madden et al., 2016).
Rationale for the Change
Therefore, to increase efficiency and privacy of the patient’s data, there is a need for the
hospital to change into the electronic and digital method of data keep known as the EHR
system.
Change Objectives and Principals
The technology makes sharing of information easy and safe as it is instant and secured
(Ben-Assuli, 2015). Consequently, building on these capabilities of the technology, it is clear
that it will be of much importance to Apollo Hospital upon its implementation. The benefits
of the implementation of EHR include improved employee efficiency, improved patient
outcomes, and financial gain (Palvia et al., 2015).
Project Summary
Over the past few years, most health organizations have been transitioning from
manual data recording and keeping systems to electronic health records (EHRs) (Charles et
al., 2013). The initiative of EHRs was also established a few years ago and at the moment
most of the health institutions have been trying to leverage the use of these computerized
records (Fragidis & Chatzoglou, 2018). The transitioning from the manual systems has led to

Project Management 3
a lot of changes in the documentation and data keeping processes in hospitals (Nguyen et al.,
2014). Moreover, it has brought about changes to the staff in the hospitals. This is because it
is a real-time patient centred record digital version that allows medical staff to access
information instantly when need be (Patterson et al., 2017). It contains treatment and medical
history of the patients which makes it possible for healthcare providers to make easy follow-
ups on a patient’s condition (Friend et al., 2017).
Transitioning from the conventional data keeping method to this digital version will
come along with a number of challenges and losses for the key stakeholders in the change
process (Liao et al., 2017). Adapting to change is quite difficult and this applies to almost all
industries. Creating a vision and urgency for the proposed change is necessary as this will
help stakeholders understand the essence of the change. It is worth to note that if the entire
working staff understands the necessity of change, it will be easy to instil the change since
they can resonate with the fact that change is beneficial and this makes it easy for the
employees to embrace the change and become more motivated to the change hence
facilitating the process of change smoothly (Van et al., 2015). Therefore it is essential for
stakeholders to understand how change affects the employee efficiency and performance and
patient outcomes.
Possible losses associated with EHRs include lack of standardized EHR products,
costs and resistance to change by the members of staff (Heisey-Grove et al., 2014). This is
brought by the difficulty from the use especially during the initial stages of implementation
which leads to the reduction of productivity and finally lack of perceived benefits to the
providers since the benefits accrued are those of society and the payers (Gabriel et al., 2014).
The transition requires a change in software and also training among the employees with a
view to equip them with the necessary skills required in the operation of the technology
(Adler-Milstein et al., 2014). Due to the day in day out technological advancements,