Keeping Up - What's New

Information Technology Updates

Cerner Integration Project

In late January, we will begin the design of our new integrated patient financial and clinical system from Cerner.  Included is a replacement of numerous systems currently in use at Danbury/New Milford and Norwalk Hospitals and WCMG.

The Cerner system will include patient registration, billing, and scheduling, replacing Invision (DH), Eclipsys (NH) and AthenaHealth (WCMG); core clinical systems replacing Allscripts Touchworks (WCMG), Soarian (DH), and a new design for the Cerner PowerChart used at NH.

Cerner ancillary systems to be installed include pharmacy, laboratory, radiology, oncology, surgical services, and emergency department.  We are also evaluating several additional modules to cover behavioral health, rehabilitation, cardiology, bed tracking, and endoscopy.

WCHN is already working across hospital campuses to standardize care guidelines, formulary, order sets and preference cards in the OR to be better prepared for this project.  In addition, during the next 2 months we will be finalizing our project structure and creating project teams to participate in multiple design sessions during the first half of next year.  Physicians from all departments and specialties will be involved with multiple teams to assist in the design and development of this new system.  We are excited to be moving to a single, patient-centric, completely integrated system for WCHN.

Norwalk Hospital: Microsoft Exchange is coming!

After many months of work, we are ready to move WCHN to a single, integrated email and calendaring system. Norwalk Hospital staff currently using LotusNotes will begin to use Microsoft Outlook.  Any new email using the existing Norwalk email addresses will be automatically forwarded to the @wchn.org address.

Read-only access to Lotus email and calendars will remain in effect as emails and appointments cannot be converted to Outlook.  We will transition by department and notify each group of their migration date in advance.  The complete transition is expected to take approximately two months.

Cyber Risk in Healthcare

There is a persistent and growing threat of compromised data and medical identify theft in our industry. As we expand our number of access points to protected health information via electronic health records, and with the increasing popularity of real-time access, healthcare will continue to be a vulnerable and attractive target for cybercriminals.

During 2015 we experienced an increase in healthcare data breaches on a national level. In response to the local Anthem breach this year, WCHN launched a comprehensive investigation into our systems which revealed the welcome news that our systems have not been compromised. We consider security of our data a high priority and will continue to focus on security protocols to protect against external threats as well as those that may come from inside our organization.

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