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Phelps County Regional Medical Center received a very large boon last week when the hospital was awarded a Stage Six designation for its advances in implementing electronic medical record information from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society at a national conference in Chicago.
Citing increased patient care, safety and reduced costs for health-care recipients because of its increasing usage of electronic medical records (EMR), PCRMC joins the ranks of only two other hospitals in Missouri that have been designated Stage Six medical facilities — SSM Healthcare in St. Louis and Citizens Memorial Healthcare in Bolivar.
The “Identification of Accomplishment” given to PCRMC administrators at the convention resulted in the hospital joining a short list of only 60 other hospitals across the nation that have been awarded the Stage Six designation, or less than 1 percent of all U.S. hospitals.
The top ranking issued by HIMSS is Stage Seven, which no hospitals in Missouri has yet to be designated.
In addition to the accolades the hospital received from HIMSS, the upshot will be the $5.58 million in total federal Stimulus funds PCRMC will receive over a four-year period, 2011 through 2014.
In January President Barack Obama pushed for electronic health records for all Americans within five years.
“To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that, within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized,” Obama said in a speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “This will cut waste, eliminate red tape and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests.
“But, it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs — it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health-care system,” Obama said.
David G. Dawdy, chief information officer at PCRMC, was optimistic about the government’s plans for escalating the transition to electronic medical recordkeeping.
“The federal government will actually drive the formation of an integrated system. Someday, it’s going to explode. Someday you’ll be able to access your medical records from somewhere in Russia,” Dawdy said. “All the hospitals will be working hard to accomplish what we’ve already accomplished.”
Dawdy explained some of the more interesting applications of PCRMC’s electronic medical recordkeeping.
A “Closed-Loop Bedside Medication Verification,” program was implemented three years ago, to reduce medication errors, Dawdy said.
Phelps County Regional Medical Center received a very large boon last week when the hospital was awarded a Stage Six designation for its advances in implementing electronic medical record information from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society at a national conference in Chicago.
Citing increased patient care, safety and reduced costs for health-care recipients because of its increasing usage of electronic medical records (EMR), PCRMC joins the ranks of only two other hospitals in Missouri that have been designated Stage Six medical facilities — SSM Healthcare in St. Louis and Citizens Memorial Healthcare in Bolivar.
The “Identification of Accomplishment” given to PCRMC administrators at the convention resulted in the hospital joining a short list of only 60 other hospitals across the nation that have been awarded the Stage Six designation, or less than 1 percent of all U.S. hospitals.
The top ranking issued by HIMSS is Stage Seven, which no hospitals in Missouri has yet to be designated.
In addition to the accolades the hospital received from HIMSS, the upshot will be the $5.58 million in total federal Stimulus funds PCRMC will receive over a four-year period, 2011 through 2014.
In January President Barack Obama pushed for electronic health records for all Americans within five years.
“To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that, within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized,” Obama said in a speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “This will cut waste, eliminate red tape and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests.
“But, it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs — it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health-care system,” Obama said.
David G. Dawdy, chief information officer at PCRMC, was optimistic about the government’s plans for escalating the transition to electronic medical recordkeeping.
“The federal government will actually drive the formation of an integrated system. Someday, it’s going to explode. Someday you’ll be able to access your medical records from somewhere in Russia,” Dawdy said. “All the hospitals will be working hard to accomplish what we’ve already accomplished.”
Dawdy explained some of the more interesting applications of PCRMC’s electronic medical recordkeeping.
A “Closed-Loop Bedside Medication Verification,” program was implemented three years ago, to reduce medication errors, Dawdy said.
The process involves scanning barcodes from the patient’s armband and the patient’s medication to check for accuracies.
“Very few hospitals have this verification — 2.5 percent across the U.S.,” Dawdy said.
Another application residing within PCRMC’s integrated electronic medical information system, or the HIS (Hospital Information System), is the Computerized Physician Order Entry, which presently is used by approximately 50-to-60 percent of the physicians at PCRMC, although the goal is 100 percent, Dawdy said.
The Physician Order Entry instantaneously sends doctors’ orders, or instructions, to other medical staff and departments to initiate immediate courses of action or requests for tests.
Add to those, digitized X-rays, CAT scans, laboratory tests, remote access by PCRMC credentialed physicians to their patients’ records, or the hospital’s program, Up To Date, which is an invaluable reference site for the hospital’s physician and nursing staff, and the possibilities for access to instantaneous medical information is limitless, and it’s continuously growing.
Within five years, Dawdy forecasted, approximately 80-to-95 percent of doctors and pharmacies will be utilizing the Internet-based program, E-Prescribe, for dispensing medications.
PCRMC Vice President and Chief Financial and Operating Officer Jerry Paule said the Hospital Information System, first perceived in 2001, originally was implemented with all eyes focused on patient care and safety.
“We’re doing the right thing for the patient,” Paule said.
“When I started here, it used to take days for information to be forwarded to other people and departments at the hospital,” Paule said. “Now, we’re passing information faster than ever before.”
Paule said the total investment on the eight-year project was $20 million.
The present infrastructure is sound, Paule said, and it was built with an awareness of changing technologies.
PCRMC presently is testing a voice recognition system that will enable physicians to dictate updates to medical records.
“We’re tying up with physicians’ offices right now, and we’ll be live with this by the end of the year,” Paule said.
“We’re honored to be Stage Six, but within the year, we’ll be Phase Seven.”
