If Your EHR is Incomplete – And It Is – Your Physicians Are Losing Valuable Time

Controversy surrounds the term “the golden hour,” the alleged time period between initial trauma and prompt medical care that could keep a patient alive. Some adhere to the belief, conceding that the hour could be mere minutes or many hours. Others consider it a myth, with little or no scientific research to back it.

Skeptics and followers agree, however, that delays in patient treatment are undesirable, regardless of the reason. And though the difference between emergency and general care is great, time wasted on searching for and waiting on paper documents or physical patient files still reflects a delay in treatment or a pivotal minute lost.

In other words, time spent searching for paper is time better spent serving patients, treating illness and developing a stronger doctor-patient relationship.

So maybe healthcare has new kind of “golden hour,” one centered on the time medical professionals recover when they have complete and rapid access to vital patient information right at their fingertips.

And if there is a new golden hour, how does a health information management (HIM) team give its medical staff access to it?

Searching for the New Golden Hour

Most hospitals, medical groups and physicians’ offices have implemented some form of electronic health record (EHR) solution to recover time lost searching for documents and gathering files. A typical EHR solution integrates a mix of technologies, such as electronic medical records (EMRs) and picture archive communications systems (PACS) that give a hospital a fully electronic record.

But many EHRs remain incomplete because most EMRs omit at least 25 percent of patient information in most instances. Usually missing from EHRs are loose items – paper by way of financial forms, administrative faxes, clinical images, charts and more. Items not easily handled by even best-in-class EHR solutions, but better suited for a document management solution, like OnBase.

Filling the information gap and regaining the new golden hour for its 580 physicians was mission critical for Metro Health Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich. A standard pain point for physicians was increased difficulty locating information in its EMR solution, specifically the number of “clicks” it would take a caregiver to gain access to critical information.

“Their time is very valuable and removing one click to get to information was very important to them,” says John Cromer, Metro Health Hospital project manager.

Finding the New Golden Hour

The answer for the 280-bed hospital was to find a document management solution that would integrate seamlessly with its EMR, give doctors and caregivers access to information while in the patient’s room, and make its overall EHR solution more meaningful and complete.

“It was critically important that we get the patient’s paper-based information into the system as quickly as possible to be used by the physicians and caregivers as they tend to patients,” says Cromer.

The solution was also considered a Tier 1 application, so it had to have the highest reliability. After careful consideration, Metro Health chose OnBase.

“Links to patient documents stored in OnBase are embedded throughout the EMR application and are easily accessible (to physicians),” says Cromer. Physicians also have the luxury of electronically signing scanned documents from anywhere in the hospital, the patient’s room, their office, even at home or a satellite clinic. They are no longer required to walk to down to the HIM office to sign the paper chart.

In essence, they have regained at least one kind of golden hour.