tores all clinical, financial and administrative information for each patient chart. Once a patient is discharged, the medical records department immediately scans the chart into ChartMaxx so it is accessible to all authorized users at the hospital. Benefits include decreased costs and increased productivity.
The conventional method of patient charting continued to be an area of inefficiency and high costs because it required employees to spend enormous amounts of time writing and copying patient records, storing them in files, compiling charts, and making them available to doctors and others who requested them in ways that also were time consuming and costly (fax, mail, courier). The computerized information systems available today are designed to eliminate these processes and replace them with a technology-based options which also expand access, increase speed of exchange, eliminate costs, and increase efficiency. At Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, healthcare management selected the EMTEK System 2000 Point of Care (POC) Electronic Medical Record System which is unique because of its distributed architecture. Some healthcare providers cannot afford a system that is elaborate and as complex as the enterprisewide ChartMaxx. The EMTEK offers an alternative because it can be expanded and allows an incremental implementation across various departments:
The system configuration consists of EMTEK Health Care System’s comprehensive object-oriented database software running on intelligent workstations interconnected via a local area network. Starting with a small pilot project in its surgical ICU in 1990, Barnes has expanded the POC to 110 bedsides throughout 9 ICUs. In the automated environment, patient records are more complete, up-to-date, accurate, and accessible to designated caregivers at all times.
The role of management in implementing computerized patient charting systems is a vital and complex one. One of t...