Electronic health record launches at SSM St. Joseph Hospital West
Hundreds of physicians and staff from SSM St. Joseph Hospital West have spent months training on the new EHR system, and are ready to flip the switch from paper to digital records. The change will be dramatic.
Medical records will no longer take days to make the journey from one SSM physician to another, or risk getting lost. Clinicians will have instant access to patients' charts to review previous medical conditions or current test results, or to chart a diagnosis. Medications prescribed are automatically checked against other prescribed drugs, diagnoses and lab results, and suggest possible changes in treatment. Improved data access is also expected to reduce wait times.Physicians can log into the secure system from virtually anywhere and see their patients' records, resulting in a faster response and reducing the chance that an important piece of information may be missed.
"Making the switch to electronic health records is about improving the speed and accuracy of communication, from doctor to patient, and doctor to doctor," said Pat Komoroski, president of SSM St. Joseph Hospital West. "When you improve and streamline communications, you improve patient care, and that's the goal."
St. Joseph Hospital West is the first hospital in the SSM Health Care system to make this conversion that includes all SSM hospitals, doctors' offices and outpatient facilities, and extends through 2011. When complete, the EHR will be available on more than 13,000 computers at SSM facilities in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma.
According to a recent study by the Institute of Medicine, one of every seven primary care visits is affected by missing medical information. One goal of this conversion is to place all medical information where it is readily accessible to anyone providing care at any SSM facility.
Eventually, St. Joseph Hospital West patients will also have access to MyChart, an online component that offers them secure access to portions of their medical record. If a patient has a question or sees an error in their chart, he or she will be able to e-mail the staff directly. Parents will be able to look at shot records and growth charts and Tylenol dosages without having to call the office.
Dr. Jay Moore of the SSM St. Charles Clinical Medical Group was one of the first physicians to go live with EHR in November.
"To a degree you never could before, you can collect and analyze your own data, then modify your practice," he said. "For example, I can compare the charts for all my diabetic patients undergoing a certain type of treatment to see if it's working. This is a huge benefit for quality improvement."
Moore also believes that quality of care will improve because of the new ability to easily share information between physicians' offices and SSM hospitals. With paper health records, there was no efficient system for sharing information. If an ER received a patient in the middle of the night, caregivers have no access to the patient's medical history. With EHR, caregivers will be able to see everything the patient has been treated for by his/her primary care physicians, in addition to what medications the patient has been prescribed. This will give all caregivers a more "complete" picture of each patient's state of health, thus enhancing their ability to provide thorough medical care.
SSM Health Care is investing an estimated $330 million in its conversion to EHRs.
"The long-term benefits of the electronic health record will be recognized at every level of SSM Health Care, and most importantly, by every patient who visits one of our hospitals," said Tom Langston, SSM Health Care's chief information officer for Project Beacon. "This initiative is critical to the continued success of our mission in the 21st century."
