Bristol Hospital (Bristol, CT) has been reaping the benefits of their fully integrated MEDITECH EHR ever since their 2011 big bang rollout. Always striving for the highest levels of safety, quality care, and patient satisfaction, the 134-bed community hospital is the first in the state — and the first MEDITECH 6.x customer — to achieve HIMSS Stage 7.
We recently visited the Connecticut hospital to talk with leaders about their Stage 7 designation, and why the MEDITECH EHR is essential to every department.
Here’s what Bristol’s executive team had to say….
“When making our EHR investment, ROI was one thing we focused on. What do we need to improve and where is the return?For example, we eliminated duplicate testing and drastically reduced the costs associated with paper records; our filing staff have transitioned to clinical informaticist positions. In fact, we’ve achieved incredible financial results across the board.
But the real return was implementing an EHR that can save lives. By ‘hardwiring’ Best Practices into clinical workflows, we’re seeing shortened lengths of stay, improved efficiency, more effective care, and better outcomes. In terms of process measures and Medicare, these improvements clearly affect ROI.”
“The HIMSS reviewers were very impressed that our nurses were so engaged with our EHR. That’s because we’ve streamlined the system to work for our nurses. Nurse teams review everything in our system and discuss ways to make documenting faster and easier—customizing everything to work best for them.For example, before MEDITECH, our nurses wrote patients’ reports on pieces of paper at the end of their shifts. To improve efficiency and eliminate the risk of misplacing notes, our team created an electronic form that automatically pulls in all of the patient’s data before shift change, saving nurses a lot of time and protecting patient information.”
“We’ve been on our patient safety journey for about a year and a half now, so HIMSS Stage 7 fit in with the goals we wanted to accomplish.We brought MEDITECH’s
Best Practices and
resources to the forefront of our organization, which was key. Everyone embraced the concept that we could take these Best Practices, apply them to our workflow, and receive recognition just for doing something that is needed on a daily basis.
I think the whole organization, not just the IT department or any other specific group, needs to be commended for the work they put in to make this a successful achievement for Bristol.”
“The MEDITECH EHR allows me to see my patient’s progress from my office or home, and place orders off-site. These are huge benefits for me, as I’m sure they are for many other physicians.EHRs such as MEDITECH are going to change the way we provide care — as physicians seamlessly share patient documents, labs, radiology results, and consultation notes with each other.
Moving forward, as we become more integrated with other organizations, physicians in the US will be able to provide better care and reduce the cost of healthcare for our country.”
Bristol is also progressing with MEDITECH’s Patient and Consumer Health Portal. Learn how they’re connecting patients to their EHR in this recent article published in The Bristol Press.
