Given that Cleveland Clinic has long been a leader in using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to make life better for patients, it is only natural that Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi has invested in developing a similar EMR to provide value to patients by driving up safety, quality, operational excellence, transparency and access.
Safety
Every patient wants to feel safe when they see their doctor. The complexity of modern medicine carries risks as well as benefits around therapies and diagnostics. But, a well deployed EMR can make things safer for patients. For example, when a clinician prescribes a medicine, it is checked against the patient’s weight to make sure the dose is correct. It is compared to their list of drug allergies and it is cross checked for interactions with other medicines.
Quality
Great health care organizations seek to provide consistently excellent care to its patients. Increasingly, best practices result in evidence based protocols which assure that patients get treatments which are supported by science and expert opinion. Although these guidelines can always be modified for a patient’s particular needs, they are a great place to start for the majority of patients with common problems. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi has collaborated with Cleveland Clinic to create hundreds of customized order sets in our EMR for common conditions in the region. They will serve as the basis for delivering standardized, evidence based care to the patients in Abu Dhabi.
Operational Excellence
Patients benefit from coordination amongst doctors’ offices, hospitals, procedural suites, operating rooms, across a variety of specialties. The EMR allows multiple stakeholders appropriate access at any time to view and update critical patient data.
Transparency
Very few patients around the world have free access to their own test results and medical record. Cleveland Clinic has been a pioneer in changing this via its MyChart program. They are able to review their own laboratory and imaging results, after they have been released by the doctor. The system is carefully designed to make sure the patient gets maximum information. MyChart will be part of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi’s EMR and will be a first in the Middle East.
Access
Access to the right care, at the right time and in the right place is what every patient wants. It is also the approach to ensure value is delivered through the healthcare system. When we open, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi’s Contact Center will leverage the EMR to make sure patients are scheduled with the right provider for their particular needs. The electronic time stamps will allow us to monitor timeliness of access and appropriateness of appointment making. It will also make it easy to fill empty slots in our doctors’ schedules, allowing for same day appointments that many patients desire.
When Mubadala Healthcare signed an agreement with Cleveland Clinic, the goal was to bring the Clinic to Abu Dhabi to address the critical and acute medical needs of the community. Our deployment of the EMR, which is fully integrated into the operating model of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, is one of our most potent tools in fulfilling that mission.
