New Patient Tracking System Enhances Emergency Care
St. Luke’s Hospital recently installed a new computerized patient tracking system in the Emergency Department to provide caregivers with instant access to patients’ dictated medical histories, enabling hospital personnel to move patients into triage and treatment more quickly.
“The tracking system requires very little data entry – just the patient’s name, date of birth and health complaint,” says Tom Bradley, RN, BSN, Manager of the Emergency Department and Surgical Services. “With just a few clicks of the computer mouse, our staff can connect to the hospital’s system and pull up any patient history information that has been dictated into their records, including radiology studies, previous hospital admissions and discharges, and anything else that may have been dictated on this patient in the past. The ability to access this information instantly enables us to get patients in for evaluation as soon as possible, which is our goal.”
In addition to speeding up registration, the tracking system promotes more effective communication among Emergency Department staff. Physicians and nurses can more easily determine which patients have a greater need to be seen first. In addition, Emergency Department charge nurses can better evaluate where they need to allocate their staff to avoid getting backed up.
“With one glance at the screen, we can see how many patients are still waiting to be seen,” explains Emergency Department physician Todd Kessinger, MD. “That helps us coordinate efforts with the nursing staff to manage the caseload more efficiently. We also have the ability to look up the patient’s reason for the ER visit and view the triage assessment of the urgency of each case. For patients, that translates into a reduced waiting time before they’re seen. One of the main things people dislike about going to the emergency room is the wait time. Of course, we’ve always made sure we see patients with urgent needs first, but this system speeds up the process for other patients, as well.”
The new patient tracking system was the result of an interdisciplinary team effort coordinated by Mark Brady, MBA, St. Luke’s Information Technology (IT) project manager. Management and frontline employees in IT, ER and Registration worked closely together for exceptional results. Programming for the system, which also enhances patient safety, was completed by Scot Egertson who has worked both for and with St. Luke’s Hospital for many years.
“This improvement is really ‘transparent’ to patients – they don’t realize that the technology is adding another safety net to the process – but they benefit from a better quality of care,” Bradley notes. “The information is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without having to go retrieve paper files. Patient care is improved because the medical staff can access vital patient history and information sooner, and we can use the system to track patients’ progress through the continuum of care.”
