OVERVIEW
The Clinical Informatics Specialist is responsible for leading and coordinating activities of an interdisciplinary clinical project team in the analysis, design, implementation, evaluation and support of clinical applications. This includes analysis of the structure and processing of health information for clinical decision-making and the subsequent build of support systems to automate that processing.
Focus will be on the build and maintenance of nursing, physician and interprofessional documentation, ordersets and mPages.
EDUCATION
- Bachelor’s degree (Nursing or other clinical discipline preferred)
- Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems related discipline.
- Master’s degree in Health Informatics, or related fields (preferred)
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES
1) Provides leadership for the overall analysis, design, implementation, testing, monitoring and support of clinical applications.
- Captures clinical requirements, converts them to technical requirements and transforms them into working solutions by configuring existing clinical applications or developing and implementing new technology.
- Ensures implementation design decisions address cross functional needs and embody the principles of patient focused care
- Monitors and maintains data quality and integrity by documenting, analyzing, processing, and following-up on required fixes, enhancements, and problems that are detected. - Ensures that all clinical applications support patient confidentiality in accordance with PHIPPA (Personal Health Information Protection Act) legislation.
- Provide support and education to end users of clinical systems in order to ensure appropriate, effective and safe usage and understanding of clinical applications.
- Process end user feedback and requests, and coordinate the execution of clinical application changes
- Liase with internal and external support organizations to meet the service level agreements for clinical applications.
- Maintain membership on, or consult with, committees, work groups, or task forces (as needed) to facilitate the development, implementation and revision of clinical applications.
- Function as a principal communication coordinator between end users, Information Technology, system administrators and vendors in order to identify system needs, modifications and/or issues.
- Actively participate in benefits measurements and quality assurance audit activities including assisting managers to develop measurement tools and reporting results to applicable groups.
2) Facilitates the review of processes, identifying process improvement opportunities while ensuring consistent integration across the entire system architecture.
- Analyze current processes, utilize systems methodology and build on any existing current state analysis documentation.
- Act as a change agent by identifying process improvement opportunities that support patient focused care, point of service decision-making and optimum productivity.
- Make recommendations for the re-design of clinical work processes including an analysis of the impact of information technology.
- Work with all relevant stakeholders to identify reporting requirements, develop report specifications, and define testing requirements for information retrieval from clinical systems.
3) Designs and builds enhancements to the Electronic Health Record, ensuring consistent integration across all business and clinical modules.
- Design, configure and maintain Cerner system
- Lead the development and execution of system testing scripts including regression and integration testing for all application upgrades.
- Develop system policies and procedures and maintain system documentation.
- Coordinate the development of a system/upgrade rollout strategy.
- Establish and monitor timelines and milestones in collaboration with project managers and sponsors.
- Collaborate in the development and organization of learning strategies, training and evaluation
materials for clinical applications to ensure maximum proficiency, including communication of new updates and revisions to the system.
- Lead and/or participate in the creation and improvement of standard processes for issue, support ticket and enhancement request management
4) Other Duties:
- Participate in the interviewing and hiring of new employees and students for the Information Technology team.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Solid understanding of business and clinical workflow analysis, requirements gathering, documentation and system design.
- Detailed understanding and working knowledge of Hospital Information Systems (experience with Cerner system preferred).
- Previous experience with the implementation of clinical systems preferred.
- Clinical background, 5 years preferred.
- Solid troubleshooting, analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Understanding of HL7 interfaces.
- Demonstrated management/leadership skills.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, project milestones and deliverables using standard project management tools.
- Knowledge of process improvement methodologies and quality monitoring.
- Effective verbal, presentation and written communication skills.
- Strong people skills, team player, self-starter, motivated individual able to work with minimal supervision.
- Knowledge of patient confidentiality requirements and legislation.
- Current knowledge of applicable professional practices, accreditation standards, management and health care issues and trends and the legal implications of clinical applications.
- All employees of Michael Garron Hospital (MGH), a division of Toronto East Health Network (TEHN) [formerly Toronto East General Hospital (TEGH)] agree to work within the legislated practices of the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario.
- All employees of MGH are responsible to contribute to a transparent culture of patient and staff safety by adhering to and abiding by patient and staff safety policies and procedures set by MGH.
- All employees are accountable for protecting the psychological health and safety of themselves and their co-workers through adherence to MGH's policies and practices.
