MercyAscot implements clinical documentation

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

MercyAscot hospitals have gone live with their first suite of clinical functionality as part of the organisation’s fully integrated Electronic Medical Record (EMR) implementation.

The private surgical provider went live with the first phase of its InterSystems TrakCare EMR in May 2020, implementing the Patient Administration System and billing functionality.

Sarah Gardner, general manager patient engagement and quality for MercyAscot and TrakCare project director, says the clinical documentation module went live over early February of this year.

This includes nurses’ progress notes, assessments such as falls, waterlow and care plans, and post-operative notes for specialists and allied health professionals.

More than 700 MercyAscot staff and 250 specialists have been trained on the new system.

Gardner says that for specialists, being able to access the system remotely and from their own devices has been a real game-changer.

While the organisation had originally planned a ‘big bang’ implementation of clinical functionality, it has since decided on a phased approach.

Medication management has gone live in the endoscopy department, but the wider medication management roll-out and anaesthesia module will be deployed later this year.

This was partly due to the impact of Covid-19 and staff availability, as well as getting necessary hardware into the country, but ultimately about managing the pace of change.

Lloyd McCann, head of digital health at Healthcare Holdings, explains: “it’s about building a change culture and managing the amount of change people can deal with at any one time”.

Not only was there the unknown impact of Covid-19 on workforce, but MercyAscot is going through a major site redevelopment with ten new theatres being built.

“We agreed that this was a safer way to get people engaged and we are seeing very high levels of engagement with the application and good adoption and feedback,” says McCann.

“It's not perfect, but is getting a pretty good review overall from a functional perspective.”

McCann says the organisation is working through some challenges related to infrastructure, such as login times and wifi dropouts in certain areas.

“There are some challenges around infrastructure and device performance we are working hard to resolve,” explains McCann.

"We've got to ensure that these are addressed before we roll-out further functionality as it does have an impact on end-user experience."

Gardner says, “we now have one platform for the management of our patients through the business: administration, booking, finance and billing is all within TrakCare, so we’ve taken a big step forward in making efficiencies and improving how information flows through the business.

“With clinical documentation we have taken the next step on the pathway towards a fully integrated EMR and that will take us to a very paper light disposition. Then it’s about understanding how we can optimise the system and really getting our heads around what the data is telling us to optimise the outcomes for our staff and patients,” she says.


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