Rural Hospital Partners with MEDITECH on Successful Stage 6 Journey
(11/18/2009)

When Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System (Mattoon, IL), became a MEDITECH customer just seven years ago, it also marked the beginning of the hospital's long, but rewarding, journey to Stage 6 recognition. CIO Mike DeLuca remembers how the organization's vision for enhancing care led to this fortunate partnership.

"Our goal was to improve the quality of patient care using MEDITECH, which would allow physicians to record patient data in one integrated electronic system," says DeLuca. "The staff and physicians of Sarah Bush Lincoln have all contributed to our I.T success—including most recently, our Stage 6 Electronic Medical Record adoption recognition from HIMSS Analytics."

DeLuca knew that having an integrated system would be essential to Sarah Bush's quality and efficiency goals, as it could offer providers the information clinicians needed, quickly and easily. "With the EMR, physicians can easily get a complete picture of a patient’s entire medical record," he says. "Our strategy also included implementing Physician Care Manager (PCM), which is allowing our physicians to get notifications and results must faster than before. Additionally, our ED staff have grown to rely heavily on the Emergency Department Management (EDM) Patient Tracker."

Quality Spanning the Continuum of Care
Sarah Bush Lincoln has many departments, services, and clinics outside its main campus; leaders decided to implemented the Medical and Practice Management (MPM) solution to help keep all locations connected electronically. Dr. Sherri Howell serves as the physician champion for the clinic implementations and was the first physician to go LIVE with MPM.

"Physicians have told Dr. Howell they are very pleased that pertinent clinical data is always accessible to them in a centralized EMR, regardless of where the data was entered," says DeLuca. "Caregivers can access the EMR from just about anywhere in the world, at any time through secure connections. No longer is the physician required to track down a paper chart to care for a patient; he or she can review a patient’s medications or care plan electronically."

Additional MEDITECH solutions, such as Bedside Medication Verification (BMV) capabilities, enable Sarah Bush Lincoln to provide an additional level of quality care and enhanced patient safety. "Ensuring the five rights of medication administration to each patient is crucial," says DeLuca. "We've been able to do this successfully with the help of the BMV solution."

Computerized Physician Order Enter (CPOE) is used in the inpatient and ambulatory settings at the organization as well. "Many physicians place inpatient orders electronically on a daily basis, and seven of our ambulatory locations are LIVE with the MPM software. We're looking forward to increasing our use of CPOE in all settings," says DeLuca.

Future Initiatives
Even though Sarah Bush Lincoln has come quite a ways since 2002, the organization's efforts to improve care continue, full-speed ahead, to this day. "We plan on receiving the 5.6 update from MEDITECH in April 2010, and also implementing MEDITECH’s Scanning and Archiving solution," says DeLuca. "We fully intend, and are looking forward to, achieving Stage 7 in the near future. I expect it will put us in a great position for the government incentives and grant opportunities that all of us in health care have been hoping for."

MEDITECH
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