messaging in the hospital

http://medcitynews.com/2012/04/the-electronic-medical-record-as-healthcares-yelp-opentable-and-skype/ In relation to the article above, I have heard talks of this and find it very interesting. Creating a way to instant message other people through the EMR system. Practice Fusion has released chart share which is HIPPA compliant in the messaging. I think this would be very helpful. A lot of hospitals still rely on the pager system. Many providers do not like to use the voicemail associated with pagers. The text page means that a computer has to be found to send the message. With EMR systems being accessed on phones, the instant message will be...instant. and allow for providers to respond away from computers. My concern would be with the wireless network. In our hospital we use sprint and have their network installed in our hospital, yet the signal has been horrible and messages have been delayed for hours. We need to have a reliable system to use in the hospital setting. How to ensure that a technological instrument is reliable...that I am not quite sure. But it would be nice to instantly have access to providers and for providers to not have to go on the "great search for a phone." This could increase response time in patient care.

Training and reaching the masses

So one of the question we have is how to reach our users of the EMR system for training/updates. At our hospital there are two email systems, the university email and the hospital email. The hospital has access to the hospital email not university email, but most physicians check only the university email. So email is not as efficient. We could use the mass paging system, but everyone would not be so happy being pages when they were home and off from a long night of call. We have tried fliers, but people become over- stimulated with to so many fliers and don't really pay attention to them anymore. There was a website but it became un-organized and filled with too much information, that people do not trust it anymore. An idea was to use facebook. If facebook was pushed out as a site that employees could go to to find videos on training and important updates, maybe that would be a way to keep people updated. Especially, with everything going into the feeds. However, facebook can't be reached on campus so it probably isn't a good idea to have a program people can't access at their workplace. The question is how do we find a peaceful combination between security and social medias? The other question is how do really reach people with all of the different types of medias we have? With having too many communication choices, are we actually not able to communicate at all?

facebook in healthcare

http://www.hcca-info.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Resources/Compliance%20Today/0512/CT_0512_Entin.pdf The above link is a good article about what I am going to talk about. One of the social medias- facebook and the role it has played in the hospital/clinic setting. In this blog I will touch on venting and advertising/communication. Venting. One of the top uses of facebook. However, where is the line crossed. Can health care professionals vent about their patients, take pictures of interesting cases and post them online? These things have happened and unfortunately found their way back to the patient. One thing about facebook is that you are linked to other accounts. One story that happened in Kansas was when a nursing student posted pictures of a cadaver on facebook. She was suspended but the courts overruled it and allowed her back into school. In our hospital, our security currently prohibits the use of facebook. However, everyone has it on their cell phones, and a lot of people still talk about their day/patients about it. In the article above, if there is a group of people talking about their work situation that is okay, however in health care we still have to be aware of HIPPA. I agree that we need to be aware of what we say on facebook because it involves other people in very sensitive situations. However, I do think facebook is good for advertising and communication. Facebook is now like an email that multiple people have access too. For some people it is the first thing they check in the morning. I do think we need to incorporate a way to use this massive communication system in healthcare. If we advertise programs, events and services that are valuable to patients on facebook, then we may reach more people. Sending results to the message center may be too complicated, but we can continue/start with using emails. Right now, I think it would be cool to have a page on our training for EMR on the facebook. I will talk more about training in my next blog. But these are my thoughts on facebook and uses with healthcare.

Dragon

Yesterday at work, I had a request for the Dragon. Dragon is a voice activated software that allows physicians to dictate directly into the electronic note. We had a trial of Dragon at our 2nd campus ER site. The trial went well but we had a couple of bumps since those physicians had previously just dictated and were not familiar with using the electronic note at all. They had to learn the electronic note and the Dragon software. The reason we started with that area was because they had the highest transcription cost within both hospitals. Physicians at our primary site are barking at the door to get the Dragon software. We recently had a meeting where we are debating over MModal or Dragon for a voice activation service. In the meantime, physicians who want to use this have to purchase it on their own, which is about 1300 dollars. - I learned that money plays a big role in decisions. The voice activation systems provide a compromise where physicians can still dictate and hospitals save on transcription costs. Also there is better accuracy with the physician being able to correct live in dictation. This is also supposed to be a time saver- one of the big obstacles in using EMR.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog!!! This blog will be exciting as I get to talk about my job as a physician development coach, which is just filled with technology. First, my name is Nina Hicks, M.D. and I am a family medicine physician. Right now I am working at Truman Hospital with the electronic medical record system. I am involved in the build, feedback and training of the Cerner system that we use. Just so everyone is on the same page, hospitals and clinics are required to move to electronic records instead of paper charts. There is a lot involved with this, and I was and am able to play a major role as a physician. Even with training other physicians how to use the system, we have tried to implement many types of social media since these are the times we are living in. Stay tuned for more about the days of my EMR life!!! nina m. hicks