The Cerner Electronic Health record, not unlike other EHRs, is implemented and utilized with great success. Often it will be decommissioned as part of a large hospital merger or acquisition. When this occurs, there are several considerations and tools to take into account.
How do I supply information if there is ever a concern of a breach of data?
How will I be able to outline who accessed a patient’s record and when?
How will I outline clinical events that have taken place in Cerner when something is added to the EHR?
With all of the federal, state, and local regulations to take into account, one of the tools I have found very helpful in supplying data for all of these concerns is P2Senital.
P2Senital is a reporting tool that Cerner users can utilize to outline all of this information in an easily readable structure. P2Senital is also a reporting tool, which can supply archivable discreet data. Each date, time, position, user, and patient accessed in Cerner for any time frame you outline is available. This allows you to track and archive this data into the system of your choice for the future.
When the regulatory agency requests knowledge of a patient’s record is accessed, or any clinical event triggered, this data is available via P2Senital. It does not require any customization, as you will find with other Cerner tools, and the information is discreet. The data is in a logical format and can be data mined if needed from the data archive with a SQL report if multiple patients or information is required. It can also be utilized as a standalone report, as the patient supplies the data.
Before the data is extracted via this reporting tool, you have options to outline the format you prefer to review the data. For example, you work with Cerner to outline the available discreet data elements, i.e., patient name-first, MRN-second, or date of service, etc.
You will need a tool like 7zip to open the compressed files when you receive them. This tool quickly extracts the reports, and you can use the .csv by converting them into excel.
This information works nicely to satisfy Risk and Compliance needs. I often have the Risk and Compliance or Safety officer work with HIM to validate all of the available data in conjunction with the patient’s chart. I have found P2Senital to be one of Cerner's better tools to address the three concerns that are often requested after Cerner has been decommissioned.
In the next Cerner blog, we will discuss the new Cerner TIP process and some lessons learned from a Beta site using this process and the model database.
