The Work of Believing

Are we Mad as Hatters to believe six impossible things before breakfast?

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” said the White Queen to Alice in Through the Looking Glass. She went on to explain that believing often requires work, sometimes as much as “half an hour a day.”

I loved this quote even before adventuring into EHR Land. It reflects my own experience that believing – call it imagination, optimism or even faith – requires daily practice and plenty of work, similar to going to the gym to practice good health.

What does this have to do with implementing EHR in Idaho? I’m not certain, but I compiled a list of things I believe about Syringa’s EHR implementation project. What additional items would you add to the list?

• Implementing EHR will provide Syringa tools necessary to fulfill its mission of improving the health of residents in Idaho County.
• Patients will have at their disposal tools (the EHR system) to become proactive in caring for their health and making decisions about their health care.
• Syringa’s health care providers and employees are eager to embrace this new technology.
• Our Cerner EHR implementation team has the expertise and ability to develop the best system for Syringa.

We recently hit a bump in the road which required us to change our GO LIVE date with Cerner to December 1, 2010. We are on track to go live with our other partners: ePartners (the financial, payroll and materials management side of the makeover) and emPower (time and attendance) on October 1, 2010, and so we will.

Postponing the Cerner Go Live gives us further opportunity to test and retest system to make certain that the rules for Critical Access Hospitals in Idaho are built to perfection. The plethora and complexity of these rules continues to astound our solution architects; they must be tired of hearing from us that, “we don’t make the rules; we just play by them!”

Call me Mad As a Hatter, but now I’m practicing believing another new thing before breakfast: That this Cerner implementation at Syringa Hospital and Clinics in Grangeville, Idaho, will be the single most successful implementation in Cerner’s history.

Why do I believe that? Because we have the talent and excitement of our employees, the dedication of our leaders and board, and the support of our patients. Those three things guarantee a successful effort.