LSU Health Shreveport Medical Records Go Electronic

After over five years of preparation, LSU Health Shreveport has fully coverted to electronic health records. Shreveport is the first of LSU Health's ten hospitals and 500 clinics around the state to be part of the new electronic system.
 
Nov. 9, 2011 - PRLog -- In one of the largest transformations ever for the campus, LSU Health Shreveport physicians and staff entered the era of electronic charting this week. The conversion marks the end of the traditional method of tracking patients’ medical care on paper charts and the beginning of “one patient, one chart.”

Baby Skylar Rhonese Smith was born Sunday to LaRhonda Cooper and Steven Smith just hours after LSU Health Shreveport flipped the switch on the wholesale conversion to the Electronic Health Records (EHR). For baby Skylar, it means she will have one chart that will follow her electronically whenever she has care at any LSU Health facility.  

Shreveport is first, but ultimately LSU Health’s ten hospitals and 500 clinics around the state will be part of the new electronic system dubbed PELICAN for Patient Electronic Health Information and Care Network. When all are connected, caregivers will have access to more than one million patient records in the LSU system and any one record will be available at any of the facilities.

With Shreveport’s implementation complete, the project team moves to LSU Health Shreveport’s EA Conway Medical Center in Monroe and Huey P. Long Medical Center in Pineville. Those facilities are expected to go on-line in about a year.

LSU began looking into EHR as long as ten years ago according to Lee Bairnsfather, PhD, LSU System Assistant Vice President for Information and Technology. Five years ago, planning began in earnest and the availability of federal stimulus funds were a big help to get PELICAN off the ground. Hundreds of employees worked and trained thousands of hours to create the infrastructure and implement the new technology.

LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor Robert A. Barish, MD MBA, emphasized that EHR’s chief benefit is how it will enhance quality of care by making all of a patient’s medical information readily available and easy to find. “Every entry will instantly update the patient's one and only record which is immediately accessible to all caregivers,” he said. Medication allergies, interactions, dosage concerns and other flags will pop up to ensure safe treatment. With all results documented in one chart, duplication of medical tests can be eliminated.

Dr. Barish, who trained in emergency medicine and was a member of a Maryland National Guard unit dispatched to Louisiana to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina, noted the advantage of the electronic system in cases of emergencies and disaster situations.

“Often patients are very sick or injured and can’t even tell us their medical history, and without a medical record, we have to guess,” he said, adding that many of the hurricane victims had no idea what medicines they were on or what conditions they suffered from.

With the electronic system, patients will be able to easily access their own health information, make appointments and register to receive health information and advice specific to their own health conditions. Ultimately, prescriptions will be able to be renewed electronically.

The system is expected to save money and time by making care more efficient. For staff it will eliminate time-consuming duplication and allow them to document patient care with fewer keystrokes. They will not have to track down charts from another department or decode a physician’s illegible handwritten note. Billing will be tied to the documentation in the chart so charges are accurate and complete and bills are expected to be easier to understand. Physicians will be able to view imaging and test results at a patient’s bedside on an iPad or notebook computer. Patients in some areas will register themselves on kiosks.

“It’s a whole new way of caring for patients,” noted LSU Health Shreveport Chief Information Officer Marcus Hobgood. With this implementation, Shreveport joins the ranks of leading academic medical centers like Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins who have converted to EHR. Everywhere it has been implemented, physicians and patients are pleased and wonder how they ever survived the days of paper and pens.”

Inactive paper charts fill three warehouses at LSU Health Shreveport and active charts take up more than 82,000 square feet of space in the hospital and clinics.
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