The project will produce a plan for a standards-based platform for the nursing documentation component of electronic clinical data management for Appalachian Regional Healthcare's (ARH) information system. In addition, ARH wishes to integrate those standards with a plan for point of care and supply chain bar coding throughout its patient care delivery system. ARH is an integrated rural healthcare delivery system serving 20 counties in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia. The project will use the principles of uniform medical language system (UMLS), ARH's own adaptive skills with computer system integration, ARH's stable Information System (IS) leadership, an established system wide ARH Clinical Information Steering Committee composed of informatics and clinical staff, and consultants from experienced IAIMS programs at Vanderbilt and Duke Universities. It will build on ARH's successful entrepreneurial culture and system commitment to standardize processes. The program will extend ARH's well-developed unified, integrated human resources and business information systems into a clinical realm. ARH has a single e-mail system for all settings and locations, and will make use of its system wide video teleconferencing in preparation of the plan. The plan will complement and extend the existing ARH 5-year strategic IS plan's efforts to adopt UMLS bar code platforms for patient and supply management and DICOM standards for teleradiology management. The focus of the proposed plan is to standardize communication, reduce errors, and improve patient care management with a uniform system that integrates data, real-time, across the system's clinic, inpatient, outpatient, and home care delivery services.
