Kanasa City Visit #2 - Cerner Design Review

Greetings from Kansas City!! It's my 2nd trip here and we're visiting Cerner this week for our design review. You're probably wondering what exactly design review is so I thought I'd give a little background on what I've been doing...since I haven't done this yet.

Mayo has several sites in the surrounding areas and they are referred to as the Mayo Health Systems (MHS) MHS is a network of clinics and hospitals dedicated to serving the healthcare needs of people in more than 60 communities in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The physicians and their patients are supported by the highly specialized expertise and resources of Mayo Clinic. I am working with the various health sites on a project that will standardize their electronic medical records (EMR).

Anyway, Mayo and the MHS administration has decided to use Cerner as their EMR system and I am specifically in charge of the following areas:

• CareMobile: A wireless handheld device that can be used to do bedside medication verification and some other simple nursing tasks - such as documenting vital signs.
• Plans of Care: This involved created plans of care from scratch since the system didn't already have standard plans created.
• Meds Process: This area is huge since it involves Med Reconciliation. All I have to say is that it will never go away. You think everything is good but then one little question will set off a whole new string of emails.

So, the past few months, I have been meeting with a set group of people that are from the various health sites to make some decisions on how we would want the system to work. During this design review visit, we should be able to see a little bit of what we've designed to make sure it is really what we wanted. The days will be long and we still have a lot to do...but it should be interesting and fun. Also, it looks like we'll be heading to Kansas City again in October for another visit...