Clinical Informatics during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Implications for Emergency Department and Inpatient Operations.

In response to a pandemic, hospital leaders can use clinical informatics to aid clinical decision-making, virtualizing medical care, coordinating communication, and defining workflow and compliance. Clinical informatics procedures need to be implemented nimbly, with governance measures in place to properly oversee and guide novel patient care pathways, diagnostic and treatment workflows, and provider education and communication. The authors' experience recommends: (1) creating flexible ordersets that adapt to evolving guidelines that meet needs across specialties (2) enhancing and supporting inherent telemedicine capability (3) electronically enabling novel workflows quickly and suspending non-critical administrative or billing functions in the EHR and (4) using communication platforms based on tiered urgency that do not compromise security and privacy.