Donna Palmer, RN, Manager of Professional Services at Juno Health, recently sat with our editorial team to discuss what it takes for hospitals to truly succeed with an EHR implementation, and why culture, communication, and collaboration matter just as much as the technology itself.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Palmer: It's easy for hospital leaders and administrators to make that mistake, but a project of this magnitude impacts the facility's culture and daily workflows in equal measure. The system touches every function in the hospital and must meet very diverse needs, so it simply can't happen in a vacuum.
Collaboration and change management are crucial as you work to overhaul your EHR. Depending on where you're starting from—transitioning from paper or improving fragmented processes—teams just want familiarity, and they often struggle to adapt. Involving staff members from the beginning accounts for their needs, so they don't feel compelled to force old workflows into a new system. The challenge, of course, is that chief nursing officers and clinicians simply don't have enough time in the day. They're too busy seeing patients and handling other responsibilities to fully commit to an implementation project.
That's why you need a clear, structured communication process. Ask for input across roles to understand workflow challenges and desired improvements. Involve end users in product demos to gather opinions about potential EHRs. Host prelaunch town halls across shifts so nurses, social workers, and staff in all roles can ask questions and stay informed. And don't forget the cultural nuances that can make or break adoption—things like integrating translation capabilities to break down language barriers between staff and patients, or building the EHR to accommodate diverse clinical approaches for clinicians trained around the world. These small details can have an outsized impact on long-term adoption.
Palmer: Despite their best intentions, many hospitals focus on the wrong priorities once implementations get underway. Clinical, pharmacy, integration, and administration teams end up planning in silos, solving problems for the squeakiest wheel. The problem is that making decisions that benefit one team can actively harm processes for others, and those downstream effects don't always surface until it's too late to course-correct easily.
The fix is to rethink the approach entirely by asking all end users what they truly need. Involving clinical stakeholders throughout the project helps you take their temperature as you progress and informs necessary changes along the way. Two steps make a real difference here: First, establish a multidisciplinary steering committee early on to prevent project management from becoming siloed. Second, hold regular meetings where teams share decision logs, discuss dependencies, and align timelines. This prevents bottlenecks from forming across regulatory, clinical, and build teams—bottlenecks that can quietly derail a project that looks fine on paper.
The goal is to build a solution that works within your broader hospital culture, not just one that satisfies the loudest voices in the room.
Palmer: The stakes are arguably higher after a new system debuts than before it. Go-live is a pressure test for end users who finally get to use the technology and see its real-world value, and the trajectory of the implementation is very much in the hands of clinical leadership at that point. The best opportunity you have to ensure success is postlaunch follow-up, and a lot of hospitals don't invest enough in it.
Between navigating a new EHR platform and acclimating to workflow changes, staff are dealing with significant learning curves. Creating structured feedback loops at specific benchmarks is essential for identifying issues early and ensuring smooth workflows.
In months one through three, conduct post-go-live surveys and town halls to collect feedback and identify recurring problems—things like workflows that require too many clicks or features that aren't serving anyone. Through month six, keep the multidisciplinary steering committee active and leverage that user feedback to drive post-go-live optimization, manage changes, and address broken processes before they become entrenched habits.
Ultimately, a successful EHR implementation is defined by how your hospital's culture adapts to the new reality. By making the build process inclusive and centering the solution on end users, you can mitigate staff frustration and realize your software's full potential. Empower your staff, and you empower every facet of patient care.
Please contact us to learn more about how Juno Health is dedicated to building smarter, more flexible digital healthcare solutions.