MEDHOST, provider of leading healthcare throughput and emergency department software, today announced that Boone Memorial Hospital (BMH) in Madison, W. Va., will use MEDHOST’s Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) to enhance patient care and safety, communication and processes in its ED, the critical access hospital’s primary admit point for patients. In addition, the MEDHOST EDIS will help the hospital meet Meaningful Use criteria so it can be eligible to receive incentive payments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Hospital leaders chose MEDHOST’s EDIS because of its ease of use and because of features like visual cues, automated notifications and risk alerts that help drive patient safety and improve the overall quality of care. BMH also found value in the EDIS’s ability to integrate with the hospital’s CPSI hospital information system (HIS) and in its automated and proven charge capture functionality.
“For a critical access hospital, we have high ED volumes, and nearly 90 percent of our admissions originate from the ED. We needed an EDIS that would not only help us better manage our busy ED, but also uphold and even advance the high-quality of care for which we are known. MEDHOST’s EDIS fulfilled all of those criteria,” said Susan Shreve, executive director of electronic information at Boone Memorial Hospital. “This became clear when one of our ED physicians was able to chart and place orders during a demonstration without any guidance. It speaks volumes about the intuitiveness and ease of use of the MEDHOST EDIS.”
MEDHOST’s EDIS offers reporting capabilities that enable hospitals to fine-tune ED processes and performance. These reporting tools also allow critical access hospitals like BMH to easily and accurately track physician standby time so they can be fully reimbursed by Medicare for the aggregate time that ED physicians are present in the ED but not needed to provide care.
“While our primary focus is on patient care, safety and satisfaction, hospitals like ours live and breathe by our cost reports, so it’s imperative that we receive accurate reimbursements for physician standby time. There’s a lot of value to a system like the MEDHOST EDIS that supports our patient care goals and also provides the business and reporting tools we need from a hospital management standpoint,” said Tommy Mullins, chief executive officer of Boone Memorial Hospital. “We believe that with the MEDHOST EDIS, we can expand on our hospital’s patient care philosophy and demonstrate to Boone County residents and visitors that we are committed to adopting advanced healthcare technology that helps us continue our tradition of providing the best quality care in the region.”
The MEDHOST EDIS features a customized patient tracking screen that matches the ED’s floor plan and provides visual, real-time alerts to keep clinicians better informed of each patient’s status and improve overall care and communication. In addition, it includes automatic, behind-the-scenes charge capture as a byproduct of documentation, which means the complete medical record is charged with no additional steps or user bias.
“MEDHOST’s easy-to-use EDIS results in a high adoption rate among physicians, which plays a significant role in not only enhancing patient care and safety, but also helping our Customers more accurately capture charges,” said Craig Herrod, president of MEDHOST. “MEDHOST is excited to be part of Boone Memorial Hospital’s commitment to using electronic documentation hospital-wide. We look forward to helping the hospital maximize the benefits that our EDIS can deliver by providing clinicians with tools that fully support their workflow needs.”
