Dear Colleagues, 

May 2015 is just around the corner!

I am thrilled that BWH will be among the first Partners entities to go live with Partners eCare, an electronic health record that will follow patients wherever they access care throughout the Partners HealthCare System. 

Why are we doing this? Quite simply, to improve the health of those whom we are privileged to serve by ensuring that, as clinicians, we have real-time access to current information that informs our patient care. By employing technology, we ensure access to information that will transform the care that we provide. 

Many of you have been involved in the choice and development of the system and will support users during our roll-out. In addition, our patients have been involved, helping us sort through what they believe is important functionality in what will be our new Partners eCare patient portal, providing them with access to their record and providers.

 I encourage you all to get involved in preparing for Partners eCare. This may include informing where we should place in-room devices and beginning to use these devices in the room for accessing patient information and for medication administration. Through your involvement, you each have the opportunity to shape and lead the future of health care. This transformation will ensure that you can plan for your patients' needs after they have been assigned to you, even before they arrive in your clinical area. This enhances relationship-based care, ensures that we know patients and that our patients feel known by their nurses.  It will allow you to identify nurse colleagues across the continuum who care for your patient, enhancing collaboration across traditional boundaries, creating a nursing team around the patient that ensures safe transitions. 

The Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT has adopted an effective slogan which can be found on its website, Health IT.gov. The slogan is "I am the future of health care...putting the ‘I' in Health IT." 

 It is an exciting time to be a BWH nurse. Your leadership in this endeavor will be critical to our collective success, which includes patients and their families. 

With warm regards,

Jackie Somerville, PhD, RN

Chief Nursing Officer and Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services