Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare | Health Scene Winter 2018

Efficient and user-friendly Our new elect roni c medi cal records system i s coming soon For about 10 years, Golden Valley Memorial Healthcare (GVMH) has had an electronic medical records (EMR) system—a digital version of the paper charts doctors once used. The computer system that helps to manage those records is about to change for the better. This fall, GVMH will roll out a new system that will help make patient care even safer and more efficient, while also improving your access to your online health records. ONE UNIFIED SYSTEM A typical electronic record contains patient health history, medication and allergy lists, doctor’s notes, and other key data. Currently, GVMH’s hospital and outpatient clinics use different EMR systems. So providers may not always have seamless access to the same data. The new system will be unified.This will bring many benefits, says Bill Dailey, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer for GVMH. For one, you won’t have to repeat a lot of the same health information when you see different GVMH providers. “You won’t get asked the same questions over and over when you go from care setting to care setting,” Dr. Dailey says. “Maybe you need to go from the doctor’s office to physical therapy or to surgery. All of your data will be the same and shared between those locations.” That could save you time and potentially improve your care. To illustrate the point, Dr. Dailey notes that your regular doctor will already know if you’ve been prescribed a new medicine after a hospital stay, for instance. “The amount of efficiency and safety afforded by that is high,” Dr. Dailey says. Another advantage for you: Having one EMR also simplifies bill-paying—no more separate bills from hospital and outpatient settings. FAMILIES FIRST Patient-friendly, too GVMH already has a portal that patients use to access their health information online. But the new one has the ability to let you do tasks like these with one-stop ease. As the system rolls out, patients may be able to: ■  ■ Make appointments ■  ■ Message doctors ■  ■ View test results ■  ■ Pay bills “We want to optimize the patient’s view of their own health information and their access to us,” says Bill Dailey, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer for GVMH. them, not the other way around. Our members also read through our patient education materials and helped us understand why, from a layperson’s perspective, they weren’t as clear as they needed to be. As a result, they’ve been revised. We also modified a parking area to make it safer and more accessible. But these are just the beginning of the changes ahead. GVMH believes in continually asking what we can do better for patients and their families. is on avoiding spreading infections.The team has worked with doctors and nurses to prevent infections from catheter use, known as CAUTI, for more than four years—a streak nearly unheard of in a healthcare organization. “We monitor any and all infections in the organization,” says Oyler. “If we see an increase from the baseline, we can intervene. If an outbreak occurs, we can investigate, identify the source and control the infection.” MAINTAINING EMPLOYEE HEALTH Employee health is another important factor. Staff are at a high risk and must have appropriate immunizations, depending on their role. For example, kitchen staff must have a hepatitis A vaccine, and it is recommended for engineering and maintenance staff to have all vaccines, given the level of exposure they experience. “The hand hygiene program is at the root of it all,” says Oyler. “It’s a scale that slides. Hygiene up, infection down. Everyone has to buy in to the process and enforce the monitoring and practices for it to work.” The final step to ensure safety is educating patients and caregivers on how to stay healthy at home, adding up to real success for all patient care staff here at GVMH. GVMH has been ranked first in Missouri in the patient safety domain four quarters in a row, and 12th in the nation. WINTER 2018 3