Enhancing Patient Safety through a Universal EMR System
Project Details -
Completed
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Grant NumberUC1 HS015083
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AHRQ Funded Amount$1,500,000
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Principal Investigator(s)
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Organization
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LocationDuBoisPennsylvania
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Project Dates09/30/2004 - 09/29/2007
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Care Setting
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Health Care Theme
The purpose of this project was to implement an electronic medical records (EMR) system that allows physicians and clinicians to access patient information using a secured Web portal at the point of care to enable better clinical decision support and enhance patient safety. The projects primary focus will be the inpatients of the DuBois Regional Medical Center and the outpatients of the Free Medical Clinic of DuBois. Both areas will scan in barcoded patient clinical and certain financial documentation within a 24 hour period. The study was designed to examine various measures in the areas of organizational finance, workflow impact, and clinical processes, to determine what effects the EMR had on these measures. The principal findings of the study were mixed in that there was success in meeting some financial, workflow, and clinical processes goals, since incomplete coding backlog plummeted and records retrieval times was cut to under a few minutes. However, isolating the effects on some of the other measures proved quite elusive. AR days and days of cash on hand where particularly difficult to isolate or hold constant without being effected by so many other variables.