Electronic Patient Charting

Today's healthcare manager is faced with similar pressures as managers from other industries, including the need to improve service, cut costs, increase efficiency and productivity, and increase profits. One of the areas that is the most labor intensive and inefficient for the hospital and nursing staff in the healthcare industry is the manual charting and reporting of patient records. The advent of bedside technology has enabled healthcare management to apply economies of scale across vast service areas when it comes to electronically charting patient records.

New technologies enable hospital information systems to be automated in a manner that increases accuracy, reduces barriers to access, cuts costs, reduces manual labor, and according to many studies it is responsible for elevating the level of patient care. The following analysis will discuss the following: impact of computerized charting on the healthcare manager and industry, including types of electronic information systems; the manager's role in implementing such a system; the impact on hospitals and nursing staff; and, the benefits and drawbacks of such systems.

There are many electronic patient charting systems available on the market. One that has been implemented at Santa Teresita Hospital in Duarte, California, is known as ChartMaxx Electronic Patient Recording System by MedPlus, Inc. One of the biggest obstacles wi

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dget constraints are a considerable management issues, one that is often the sole reason why healthcare providers who have not implemented computerized patient charting systems have not done so "Healthcare's tight economic constraint is a major factor adding to the slow market penetration for point-of-care systems. Return on investment is another important factor" (Stefanchik 1). Still, because of many studies which show that implementing computerized patient charting decreases costs while increasing productivity and efficiency, they remain one of the most sought after requests of healthcare managers "The number of hospitals interested in bedside systems as a tool to promote increased nurse productivity increased to 41% in the 1990 survey. With documentation occupying nearly � of a nurse's patient-centered activities, it is no surprise that charting topped the top 10 priority list" (Stefanchik 1). Some healthcare managers have devised methods of reducing training time because of their good decision-making when it comes to the type of product purchased. For example, not all computerized systems are truly electronic analogs of traditional paper charting. EMR is one system that truly does provide an electronic analog of paper

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