Emerson Hospital Gets More from MEDITECH with Electronic Forms on Demand Integration from Access

May 10, 2012 - PRLog -- For years, Emerson Hospital, a full service, 179-bed, non-profit community hospital in Concord, Mass., relied on a combination of pre-printed forms from a third party vendor, forms printed internally and a few electronic versions, leading to version control and legibility issues.

A new Director of Medical Records decided that the hospital could overcome these challenges with an electronic forms management suite. A core requirement was ability integration with the facility’s MEDITECH Magic system, to enable pre-filling of patient demographics and the launch of customized forms packets directly from MEDITECH.

After evaluating several options, Emerson chose the Intelligent Forms Suite from Access (http://accessefm.com/products/access-intelligent-forms-suite-ifs-healthcare.aspx), the leading e-forms on demand choice for hospitals.

Radiology is the first department at Emerson to go live with e-forms. To empower Emerson’s staff to take full ownership of its e-forms project, an Access implementation consultant stayed on site for three days.

“We were impressed by how our Access consultant helped us analyze and improve our forms workflow, and by how he was willing to stay as long as was needed to get our e-forms process running right,” said Jean Dorval, senior applications analyst at Emerson.

As planned, staff members can customize many aspects of a patient’s forms packet directly from their MEDITECH screens, can choose where they print, and can select whether Access Intelligent Forms Suite will output a 2-D barcoded wristband for an adult or pediatric patient (http://accessefm.com/healthcare-solutions/positive-patien...). This is highly unusual for an out-of-the box e-forms management application, as such integration is typically impossible or requires the costly and slow intervention of a third party integration specialist.

“The integration between Access Intelligent Forms Suite and MEDITECH Magic (http://accessefm.com/products/access-enterprise-forms-man...) allows us to generate exactly the forms and wristbands we need for each patient,” Dorval said. “We are impressed by how seamless the integration is, and the flexibility it gives our users.”

The wristbands produced by the Access system enhance patient safety, by ensuring positive identification throughout the visit. These wristbands can be used to support barcoding-enabled Bedside Medical Verification (BMV) and medical devices, such as EKG and fetal monitors.

As well as printing these wristbands and radiology-specific forms, Emerson is also using Access Intelligent Forms Suite to generate face sheets, labels, consent and insurance forms — a complete, on demand packet.

“We now have the ability to customize exactly where forms print, to generate forms at multiple locations, and to re-print forms efficiently as needed,” Dorval said.

Access Intelligent Forms Suite uses several unique identifiers to intelligently apply a secure barcode to each form. This will enable Emerson’s medical records team to scan completed forms directly into the document management system, without the need for time-consuming and error-prone manual indexing. Once in the system, the forms will be available to authorized users across the hospital.

Using the Access system has also enabled Emerson to streamline its MEDITECH NPR reporting. Some e-forms systems require hospitals to create a distinct report for each form, but with Access Intelligent Forms Suite,just one report can be used to map data from the MEDITECH HIS across as many forms as is needed (http://accessefm.com/Healthcare-Solutions/-Intelligent-Da...).

One of the keys to the success of Emerson’s electronic forms project is the relationship with Access’s professional services and support group.

“The Access team understood our forms workflow and made creative suggestions to improve it, and any time I have a question I know I’ll get the answer I need,” Dorval said.

About Emerson Hospital

Emerson provides advanced medical services to more than 300,000 people in 25 towns. It is a 179-bed hospital with more than 300 primary care doctors and specialists, caring for everything from arrhythmias to urology. Emerson’s core mission has always been to make high-quality health care more accessible to those who live and work in its community. To further this mission, Emerson has outpatient facilities in the towns of Westford, Groton, Sudbury and Concord, Massachusetts.

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.