GROVE CITY HOSPITAL

Grove City Hospital

Grove City Hospital

Introduction

The Grove City Hospital is privately owned hospital in Scarsdale. There patients include young adults and the families as well. Grove City Hospital has 400 patients and a staff of 1300 employees. The Medical records of each patient have always been kept in document form on the premises. They are wondering if they should find an electronic means of documentation and storage. In this paper we will analyze whether the hospital used a logical thought and planning process to make their decision regarding electronic recordkeeping by using six step decision making process.

Steps 1: Define the Problem

Grove City hospital's customers are very impatient with waiting for assistance in the waiting rooms. Also there have been lines of patients waiting in the ER. Wait times have been about 4 to 5 hours.

Steps 2: Alternative Solutions

The old days of medical records by paper are rapidly heading into the past, and electronic medical record is the wave of the future. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) offers every person with a secure and private lifetime record of his or her health history and care within the health system. The EMR is obtainable electronically to authorized health care providers anytime and anywhere in maintaining high quality care. EMR has been shown to improve nursing efficiency, increase patient safety, and improve documentation. By evaluating the EMR it will ensure that it will meet with the health system's requirements and is critical in ensuring a smooth patient transition. So Grove City hospital must implement Electronic Medical Record which will help them to save the cost as well as they will able to satisfy their patents (Gillespie, 2007).

Steps 3: Alternatives Solutions evaluation

Impact on patients

EMR systems in Grove City Hospital will help to improve patient care as there are smaller amount medical errors, which lessen the safety of the patient's care, permits reasonable data for sudden emergency room visits, regular doctor visits and operating room care when needed. The ease of having mobile data is vital for the patients who are on some sort of vacation, being relocated, or have changed providers. An EMR system offers secure access to an individual's medical records through a patient portal; the convenience authorizes patients to administer their own health (Arar etal, 2005).

Financial impact on Grove City hospital

Some of the financial benefits for Grove City Hospital include cutting costs and help increase revenues. This item includes items such as the reduced paper pulls, transaction costs, and limits the interactions of drugs. By providing drug suggestions to patients it can save about 15% on total cost of prescriptions per year, not to mention it can reduce lab charges and radiology charges. By simply computerizing the forms patients fill out when they first arrive, it will increase interoffice procedures and lower billing errors dramatically(Gillespie, 2007).

Some of the costs can include the hardware and software, implementation, training, not to forget the continuance support and maintenance. As well as all of the cost that involves transitions from paper records to the ...