Huntington Memorial Hospital, a 635-bed hospital located in Pasadena, California, has a mission expressed by the phrase “right care, right place, right time.” Fulfilling that mission requires highly qualified professionals with access to the most up-to-date and accurate information on patients and treatment options. Huntington’s management realized that the traditional paper-based approach to record keeping did not adequately support that mission.

Management thus determined that it was time to begin the switch to electronic health records. Such records could make health information easily available to the hospital’s professionals at the point of care, whether that was a doctor’s office or a patient’s bedside. It could help physicians manage the increasing complexity of their work. Patient outcomes could improve, assuming the electronic records would give doctors faster access to lab results, imaging studies, and other documents.

Despite these advantages, the changeover from paper to electronic records can be a trying experience. Perhaps the highest hurdle is getting the professional staff members to adopt new ways of carrying out their work. Busy doctors, nurses, and therapists may not appreciate the added time required to learn a computer system. Working on a computer may feel especially awkward for those who have many years of experience using paper records.

Huntington’s administrators tackled the challenge by engaging the doctors in the change process. They started by conducting a survey of the physicians to learn how they handled record keeping, what value they placed on existing technologies, and what challenges they faced with keeping records. Based on that feedback, the hospital determined that electronic medical records could offer physicians the most and the fastest advantages in the area of electronic prescription data. To choose a software vendor, Huntington invited doctors to participate in a “click-off” event in which they counted how many mouse clicks they needed to complete various tasks. This event helped Huntington select a program that the doctors would be most comfortable using while also engaging them in the change process.

Huntington contracted with a software company called Allscripts to develop its electronic health records system, which it named Huntington Health eConnect. The software is offered first to interested physicians in their practices as a pilot program. By starting first with the e-prescribing application, an application doctors can use to prescribe medicine to patients, the hospital eases the doctors into the use of computer technology. As each program gets up and running, it is expanded to other physicians.

One group of physicians that has embraced the program is the Huntington Medical Foundation (HMF), which brings together 60 physicians affiliated with Huntington Hospital. HMF was an early adopter of electronic medical records and uses the system to track physicians’ prescriptions, keep up with tests and procedures ordered, and transmit information to the hospital emergency room or to the specialists the patient is consulting. HMF’s chief executive officer credits the system for helping doctors reduce medication errors and improve patient care.¹