Community News
Hospital Upgrades Decrease Errors, Increase Security
By
Sep 20, 2005, 22:27

(NUI) - Nearly 100,000 patients die each year as a result of medical errors. Many of these deaths might be prevented with electronic patient record management.

Meanwhile, 97 percent of hospitals say information security is one of their top priorities. But, more than 38 percent of them say they are not doing enough to protect patient information.

These statistics do not bode well for the medical community. But at least one hospital is taking steps to ensure it gives patients the best and most efficient protection for their health and their personal information.

St. Luke's Episcopal Health System is home to the Texas Heart Institute, one of the top 10 cardiovascular centers in the United States.

The system's latest addition, St. Luke's Community Medical Center, or CMC, in The Woodlands, Texas, opened its doors in April 2003.

When St. Luke's Episcopal Health System began planning for the new CMC, a key priority was to move its unsecured paper forms to a secure online environment and manage them more efficiently.

As hospital executives began to assess requirements in December 2002, they quickly realized the formidable challenge they faced. St. Luke's was a full-service hospital with nearly 1,000 unique forms that would need to be electronically converted before the center opened.

With a limited budget for both implementation and training, a small information technology team and only a few months time, St. Luke's found what it needed in IBM Business Partner ITM Associates Inc. and its software solutions.

ITM's software enabled St. Luke's to quickly and easily convert its existing paper forms to populate an electronic forms management system. The solution seamlessly integrates data from across the enterprise, including St. Luke's extensive patient information database, into secure Web-based forms.

The team also reduced duplication of forms between departments, resulting in a need for only 400 of the original 1,000 forms. Previously, even a minor change would require a new paper form and cause delay in patient services. But now, basic online forms can be easily modified for each department to reduce redundancy.

"Before we found ITM Associates, we estimated that the project would take us a year to complete because most applications would allow us to convert only one form every two days," said Patti Roth, senior analyst at St. Luke's Episcopal Health System. "But with the ITM solution, we were able to meet our goal of moving almost 400 forms online in less than three months."

ITM Associates is an advanced member of IBM PartnerWorld. To learn about IBM PartnerWorld, go to www.ibm.com/ partnerworld.

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