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IT Physician Survey Plan 2023

Written by Jonathan White on 9/15/2023

The HH administration is reviewing the most recent physician survey results, including several IT-related complaints. Two problems physicians mentioned were slow, outdated PCs and the problem of Cerner reloading when logging in using a badge. The IT team does take your concerns seriously and wants to help you work as efficiently as possible.

Slow PCs

Huntsville Hospital supports over 10,000 PCs across all Madison County campuses and almost 50 physician office locations. Our philosophy is to replace computers when they break or when their model no longer has the capacity to run our ever-increasing application requirements. The average life of a PC is between 6-7 years.

Currently, we are replacing 6-7-year-old PCs with Windows 11-capable models. As our vendors qualify their applications on Windows 11, we hope to begin that process later this fiscal year.

Whenever you encounter an issue with a specific PC and suspect it needs repair or replacement, please call the help desk at 5-7777. It would be helpful if you could provide the IP address (the Help Desk can assist you in finding it) and a brief description of the problem you are experiencing.

Cerner Reloading with Imprivata ID badge logins

As you know, when logging into a computer using your Imprivata ID badge, Cerner will sometimes open briefly and restart. The IT department is working through on fixing this issue unit by unit. Some computers in the areas that were supposedly updated still exhibit undesirable restarting behavior. Staff is going back through the hospital updating the workstations they find that still need to be updated. Below is an overview of what should happen when logging into the updated computers.

Expected Imprivata Badge Login Behavior:

Using your badge to tap in and out of the computer will allow you to badge out of a computer in one location, and when you ‘badge in’ at a different location, the session you were at in 1Chart/Cerner will be present. The exception is patient rooms; tapping into a computer in the patient room will take you directly to that patient’s chart and will NOT follow your session when tapping in at a different location.

Examples:

  • If a user is at the 8th-floor nurses’ station and has patient Karol Jones’s chart open, then taps out of that computer, goes to the 3rd-floor nurse station, and taps in, the computer should open back up to Karol Jones’s chart.
  • If a user is in room 403 and has patient Nancy Smith’s chart open on the computer, then taps out of that computer and goes anywhere else to tap back in, the user’s session will NOT open to Nancy Smith’s record. The user’s session will open to the base screen instead.