Doctors will be able to check what tests their patients already underwent from another day, even in another facility. Alarms will alert them to possible adverse reactions to drugs.
And patients will be able to pull up their health statistics at home over the Internet.
“Think about that at three in the morning in the ER,” hospital CEO Jack Barto said to the hospital board. “Now (treating physicians) can know exactly what's going on … It's cool stuff.”
The medical community has already dipped a toe into electronic medical records, with some further ahead than others.
But getting to a point where health information is shared electronically and seamlessly throughout Wilmington's medical community is going to take a lot more work in the coming years. Looming mandates from the federal government are prompting those discussions in earnest.
New Hanover Regional recently made a significant move when trustees agreed to spend $56 million over five years to integrate a new electronic health records system. The hospital's goal is to be a “paperless” facility when the new system launches in 2012.
That means, if all goes well, that physicians' orders, prescriptions, billings, patient health records and appointments will be electronic and not in the form of scribbled notes.
At New Hanover Regional, nurses and doctors have already been filling out patient charts at bedside computers and using electronic tracking systems for dispensing medicine.
But the challenge for the hospital, as well as for other medical providers in the next several years, is in transforming medical records into what the federal government considers meaningful use. The government will first offer incentives and then penalties to push along electronic medical records nationwide.
Over the next decade and starting next year, as much as $27 billion will be handed out to providers to implement the technology.
New Hanover Regional officials estimated $13.7 million in federal stimulus incentives could come to the hospital and its affiliated organizations for the effort in the next five years.
After the carrot, the stick kicks in with a 1 percent drop in Medicare reimbursements in 2015 and escalating after that for physicians not using electronic medical records to the level federal health officials have outlined.
That level includes recording patients' demographic information, vital signs and chart changes, active medication and medicine allergy list as part of their electronic health record.
Systems to protect privacy and security of the patient information is also a requirement, as is being able to electronically exchange key clinical information between providers.
Providers also can choose from a list of 10 other ways electronic medical records can be used, including inputting lab test results, adding advance directives for seniors and sending reminders to patients for preventative and follow-up care.
“One of the major advantages of an electronic health record is basically to augment the brain power of the various providers,” said Tad Dunn, a practicing physician of 23 years who became New Hanover Regional's first chief medical information officer this summer. “No physician, no nurse, no therapist can remember everything all the time. This provides real-time, point-of-care information that can be used to take care of the patient.
“It doesn't replace decision making. It just provides additional data for care.”
Brunswick Community Hospital is also looking at its future electronic medical records needs.
The hospital, owned by Novant Health, is 50 to 60 percent electronic with health records said Shelbourn Stevens, senior director for the hospital. Stevens has been working with a team of Novant's other community hospitals to come up with a uniform system, and he estimates the local facility could be completely using electronic records in the next 18-24 months.
One of the issues that will come up as area providers implement their own electronic medical records platforms is to make sure the information can be exchanged among different facilities.
A health information exchange network is in the process of being established so that hospitals in southeastern North Carolina can share at least basic patient data with each other.
Wilmington Health, the area's largest medical group practice, has worked with its electronic health records system for the past six years.
“To go outside Wilmington Health, it is our full intent that we are going to work diligently with others to figure out how to get these records to speak to each other,” said Jonathan Hines, Wilmington Health's board president.
He said the push from the federal government and the impact of health care reform likely will mean using electronic medical records to compare data on quality indicators.
“In the past, quality's been driven largely by … patient satisfaction. Now, quality's actually going to be able to be demonstrated,” Wilmington Health CEO Jeff James said. “With health care reform, it's going to become much more transparent, so employers and providers as well as patients will start to be able to see, ‘Here's the given level of quality for these providers and here's the cost of treatment.' ”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Vicky Eckenrode
Quelle/Source: StarNewsOnline, 04.11.2010
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