St. Peters Bone & Joint + MD-IT: Optimizing EMR Workflow

Oct. 27, 2011 - PRLog -- St. Peters Bone & Joint Surgery (SPBJ) realized an annual savings of $30,000 by optimizing their Sage electronic health record system with EMR Optimization software and service from MD-IT.  By re-introducing dictation into the practice workflow, SPBJ was able to devote more time to patient care and reduce the potential for errors in their clinical documentation.

The orthopedic practice, based in St. Peters, Missouri, has had a conventional EMR implemented since 2004. Unfortunately for SPBJ clinicians, the Sage system does not allow for dictation, which is physicians’ preferred method of documenting patient encounters. MD-IT developed an EMR Optimization plan for SPBJ, enabling the practice to utilize the speed and accuracy of dictation combined with the all of the benefits of the native Sage system.

“Before we selected MD-IT, we had to implement significant workarounds to allow our physicians to dictate. Our staff was spending up to 45 hours a week moving, fixing and correcting our documents,” said Mat Kelch, Information Systems Specialist at SPBJ.

To further enhance their workflow, the practice adopted MD-IT’s mHealth application, MD-IT iConnect for iPhone. Patient demographics and the practice schedule were easily paired with dictations, ensuring the right information is always attributed to the right patient.

“Our physicians love the iPhone app. The first one on it absolutely loved it from the first step, and was really a key component to getting the rest of the physicians on board because they saw how easy it was. MD-IT understands and listens to everything and we actually get what we need with dictations,” Kelch added.

In addition to the financial savings, clinical dictations are no longer missing critical identifying information, and instead of 45 hours a week spent moving, fixing and correcting documents, a single staffer is spending less than two hours per week. MD-IT’s solution has allowed SPBJ to focus on patient care, reduce the lag time between patient visits and completed chart notes, and significantly reduced the amount of manual copy/paste that physicians and staff had to endure.

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