Since January, 2003, St. Lucie Medical Center has started a technology journey in its Emergency Department with the goal to provide faster and better patient care and improve patient safety. Nurses in SLMCs emergency department use an Emergency Documentation Module (EDM) that helps them to document patient information. Nurses are able to document in one seamless documentation tool, when a patient arrives, information gathered during triage, all assessments and interventions up to and including discharge or admission. The nurses have found EDM to be very beneficial. An added benefit is that it helps to more accurately capture risk issues and charges. The patient chart created by EDM is easy to read and any nurse taking over the care of a patient can step right in and begin documenting without “missing a beat”.
Dr. Ruediger Lidner and Toni DiChiaccio, R.N., discuss physician orders; patient electronic tracker appears in background
St. Lucie Medical Center also added a patient tracker to its emergency room. The tracker allows all ER staff to monitor the arrival, placement and progress of patients in the emergency room. A nurse or an MD can go into the tracker and review labs, x-rays etc. Medical personnel can document in the tracker and they can see all the clinical highlights. Physician orders can be reviewed just by “clicking’ on the indicators. For example, by clicking on L for lab, the MD or RN can see all results from labs ordered.
St. Lucie Medical Centers emergency department is one of the few ERs in the state that uses both the electronic physician order module (Epom) and the electronic medication administration record (e-mar). Epom and e-mar allow doctors to order patients labs, x-rays, ekgs, various procedures and medications while attending to patients at the bedside. Or, if they choose, doctors can go to a nearby desktop PC and input orders. This technology greatly improves the emergency rooms patient flow. It also eliminates the need for a unit secretary because doctors orders go directly from the doctor to the specific department, i.e. lab, imaging, pharmacy.
E-mar technology is a key component in improving patient safety. Using e-mar, a nurse gets a complete medication profile for the patient. She then identifies patients by scanning the ID armband and checking name and medical record number. After scanning and administering the medicine, e-mar documents the process.
Indicators on the patient tracker go from “red” to “green” to notify the medical staff when all orders are complete. This helps the charge staff and primary care givers finalize and discharge or admit the patient.
St. Lucie Medical Center has used this technology to greatly improve the average length of stay in the emergency room and minimize medication errors. Reports show that the average length of stay in the emergency room has been reduced by nearly 40 minutes.
