Successful Clinicians Focused EMR Project Improves Care

Physicians and clinicians at an approximately 500-bed academic medical health system for the first time can easily access electronically its patients’ entire health records, thanks to a successful system-wide electronic medical records (EMR) implementation project.

Perot Systems collaborated extensively with doctors and nurses in order to fully understand how the EMR system could function efficiently within the clinical environment. Frequently, these implementations are plagued with challenges due to an inability to anticipate how the technology will impact the clinical operation, but in this situation all parties agree that they have overcome the challenges with remarkable efficacy.

Objectives of the Engagement: Implement an integrated clinical information system to:

1. Improve Patient Safety – By offering standard, clear documentation and electronic orders that automatically follow the patient; and electronic prompts or alerts that help prevent errors.
2. Improve Clinical Productivity – By creating easier to find and easier to use information improves clinical productivity, which means more efficient and faster patients service and care delivery.
3. Improve Clinical Outcomes/Demonstrate Quality – By collecting and analyzing data in a scientifically rigorous manner, the hospital can use this data confidently and anonymously to make improvements in operations.
4. Support of Research Mission – the ability to confidentially utilize codified electronic data to support the vast research programs in the Hospital.
5. Enhance Community Physician Outreach – By allowing referral physicians to have electronic access to relevant patient information for patients cared for in the health system, as well as being able to collaborate more closely with physicians.

Clinicians are now able to use the technology as part of their day-to-day work-flow with no hindrance to their clinical operation. In doing so, the patient’s electronic medical record is accessible by clinicians throughout the system, eliminating the requirement to fill out and manage numerous paper forms. This elimination of duplicate paperwork makes the patient’s experience less cumbersome, and also improves the safety of the environment by greatly reducing the possibility of clinicians misreading or misinterpreting information that was handwritten by several different sources.

The health system, which serves as a primary teaching hospital for a large University, now has cutting-edge technology at the point of care, which is a big step in improving the quality, safety and efficiency of the patients’ experience and plays a key role in the training of physicians and other medical professionals. It also enhances the clinical environment for the medical school’s researchers as they study ways to translate new knowledge into effective patient care.