Grays Harbor Community Hospital Supports JCAHO and EHR Meaningful Use with Access Electronic Forms

Aug. 25, 2011 - PRLog -- Grays Harbor Community Hospital (GHCH), located in Aberdeen, Wash., is using Access Intelligent Forms Suite, the world’s leading electronic forms (e-forms) on demand solution, to enhance processes on its clinical floors.

After a successful pilot project in ambulatory infusion services (AIS), diabetes education and cardiac rehabilitation, GHCH is creating downtime forms to great effect in clinical areas. The cardiac rehabilitation department, for example, prints e-forms as needed along with facesheets and labels (sent to the lab for specimen work) at the point of registration. In AIS, GHCH set up one forms group for new patients and another for those returning to the facility, ensuring only the correct forms are generated with each encounter.

“We used to spend time creating form packets and individually labeling. With Access e-forms on demand solution, all that has gone away,” said Pam Beattie, IT systems analyst at GHCH. “Our forms supply doesn’t run out and we’ve eliminated the need for forms storage, which has freed up space.”

Before deploying Access IFS, GHCH clinical staff applied labels to each form in preparation for future scanning into the hospital’s Hyland–Valco enterprise document management (EDM) system. Now this is unnecessary, as forms are printed on demand with intelligent barcodes and patient demographics pulled from Meditech Magic. The barcodes ensure seamless integration with patient records managed in Valco.

“When we labeled forms, they wouldn’t scan correctly if a label wasn’t straight,” Beattie said. “Because the Access system puts patient information and barcodes directly on the forms, we will get a clean scan into Valco every time, and forms legibility will be increased.”

Access IFS also made an immediate impact in diabetes education and AIS.

“Our diabetic education staff are happy because they can now generate all the forms they need in one go,” Beattie said. “It has also been a big plus in cardiac rehab, which has more forms than the other departments and now no longer has to store and manage their forms supply.”

One of GHCH’s primary motivators for replacing preprinted forms was increased version control. With paper forms, it’s difficult to ensure staff members are using new forms and that old ones are disposed. This is not the case anymore at GHCH.

“Before we switched to e-forms, there could’ve been multiple versions of forms. But now that we’re managing them in the Access e-Forms Repository, we know we’re only using the latest version,” Beattie said. “This helps us meet JCAHO standards, and we find it easy to modify forms and create new ones.”

GHCH is eager to make the most of its existing products to support ARRA EHR Meaningful Use requirements and is using Access IFS to help meet this need. Using the Meditech nursing module, Beattie and her team are identifying the forms needed during system downtime. These will be available electronically on demand, in all circumstances.

“Access’s downtime registration solution enables us to keep our processes going during Meditech downtime,” Beattie said. “It’s a necessary step in supporting Meaningful Use requirements.”

“One of the best things about our e-forms project has been high user adoption,” Beattie said. “Our nurses find that Access’s e-forms on demand solution is very user-friendly and they haven’t needed a lot of training to get going.”

About Grays Harbor Community Hospital
Grays Harbor Community Hospital's (GHCH) healthcare team provides diagnostic treatment and patient care services of the highest standard, while meeting the organization’s mission to heal, comfort and serve its community. In 2009, GHCH opened a new Wound Treatment Center and in 2010 the facility was named as a PRC 4-Star Top Performer Hospital in Radiology. Learn more at http://www.ghchwa.org

About Access
Access is the world’s leading electronic forms (e-forms) management, automation and workflow software provider. Our solutions transform any paper-intensive forms process into a paperless, collaborative workflow. Hundreds of hospitals worldwide are using Access solutions to improve patient care and safety, cut costs and enhance electronic health records (EHR), patient safety and downtime planning initiatives. Learn more at http://www.accessefm.com

# # #

Access is the world’s leading electronic forms management, automation and workflow provider. Our solutions transform any paper-intensive forms process into a paperless, collaborative workflow.