St. Elizabeth Hospital Helps Meet HIMSS Stage 7 Requirements, Improves Patient Care with Hosted Electronic Patient Signatures and E-Forms Solution from Access and INHS

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The ability to get clinical documents into EHRs is another way that Access helped us satisfy a huge component of getting to HIMSS Stage 7.

Sulphur Springs, TX (PRWEB) October 17, 2013

One of St. Elizabeth Hospital’s goals as it moved toward Stage 7 of the HIMSS EMR Adoption Model was to deploy electronic patient signatures and e-forms quickly as part of a paperless initiative. The hosted option offered by Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS) and Access eliminated the need for dedicated on-site hardware and enabled the hospital to meet its aggressive deadline. Managing the e-forms project in INHS’s data center also provides continuous uptime and data security.

“We were up and running with our e-forms and electronic patient signature solution in two weeks,” said Shelly Pricco, Associate Vice President of Patient Care Services at St. Elizabeth. “This was one of the fastest implementations I’ve ever seen, and everything worked seamlessly with our MEDITECH system.”

The Access system soon made its mark on patients in the admissions department. Instead of waiting for a staff member to retrieve and label preprinted forms, they’re now quickly presented with a complete registration packet, which the registrar launches from MEDITECH with a single click. Some data is prefilled, and the patient rapidly completes the remaining fields. They then apply secure electronic signatures.

“Patients never liked filling in the same information over and over on a stack of paperwork,” said Jody Oster, Patient Access Manager at St. Elizabeth. “They like the electronic signature setup a lot more, and because registration is faster with the Access system, they’re getting care without delay. It has really enhanced the patient experience.”

Electronic patient signatures and e-forms are not only making patients more satisfied with their experience at St. Elizabeth, but also safer.

“Wherever we can remove steps, we eliminate errors and so improve patient safety,” Oster said. “That’s exactly what Access solutions are doing.”

Nurses also are taking full advantage of the speed of e-forms on clinical floors. They simply select a patient in Access’s e-forms repository, click a button to generate a cover sheet with the patient’s unique information, and then scan any clinical documents to send them into the correct EHR.

“The ability to get clinical documents into EHRs is another way that Access helped us satisfy a huge component of getting to HIMSS Stage 7,” Pricco said.

Now that the hospital has been awarded Stage 7 status (the first hospital using MEDITECH Magic to achieve this), St. Elizabeth’s registration department is finding other innovative ways to apply Access’s electronic patient signatures product. Questions for federally mandated race and ethnicity forms are presented on signature tablets. When the patient completes their selections, the registrar sees these and quickly enters the data into MEDITECH.

“In addition to helping us meet HIMSS Stage 7 requirements for going paperless, Access e-Signature also is enabling us to capture more information for government-required race and ethnicity forms,” Pricco said. “We’ll keep finding new ways to use the system across the hospital.”

About St. Elizabeth Hospital

St. Elizabeth Hospital provides 24-hour emergency care, a spacious family birth center, leading-edge surgery suites, simple to sophisticated diagnostic imaging exams, the latest in gastrointestinal lab screenings and procedures, and a full range of specialty services. The hospital earned a HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model Stage 7 award and the prestigious LEED Silver certification by the United States Green Building Council.

About Access

Hundreds of hospitals worldwide use paperless Access solutions to integrate e-forms, electronic patient signatures and clinical data into EHRs. Access helps improve care, eliminate financial and environmental costs and enhance patient safety and downtime planning initiatives. Learn more at http://www.accessefm.com and discover how you can help Access’s partner The Last Well bring fresh water and the Gospel to Liberia here.

About Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS)
INHS is a health care IT vendor that provides advanced clinical and financial systems, electronic health record and meaningful use services and solutions and consulting services for hospitals and physicians nation wide. INHS hosts and manages hospitals information technology systems which allow physicians and health care providers to securely access patient information utilizing wired and wireless technologies. The INHS health information technology network includes more than 4,000 physicians, 450 clinics and physician offices and 3.5 million electronic health records. More than a dozen hospitals that utilize INHS technology services, have attested to Meaningful Use criteria. For more information, visit http://www.inhs.org or follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/INHSonline and Twitter: http://twitter.com/inhs

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