Electronic Medical Records Software in a Nursing Home Essays

Electronic Medical Records Software in a Nursing Home Essays Electronic Medical Records Software in a Nursing Home Paper Electronic Medical Records Software in a Nursing Home Paper St. John Elderly Homes is a newly established nursing home for the elderly just outside the metro of New Jersey. It was established last 2007 with a capacity of fifty patients. Presently, it houses forty eight elderly, thirty males and eighteen females, with three in-house doctors, a head nurse, five nurses, six caregivers and support utility and administrative staff of five. Because of the number of their patients and continuous lab testing and medications, the head nurse of the St. John, Ms. Lenny Jose, was asked to purchase Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software. St. John Elderly Homes chose to acquire Advance Data Systems (ADS) Corporation’s MedicsDocAssistant EMR. Â  It was chosen against other EMR because of its features applicable and helpful to the elderly homes’ settings and its considerable cost (the package of the technology was not disclosed by Ms. Jose as part of their contract with ADS). According to Mr. Michael Brown, head of the I.T. department and the over-all head on the recent implementation of the software, one of the features of ADS’ EMR is its accessibility to patients. The patients can fill-up the information needed in advance prior to their visit or acceptance to the nursing home. The nurses and caregivers update the information on the EMR every now and then. This helps the doctors and nurses to track the patients’ development and health status. The supplier of the EMR software has an in house technician, working closely with Mr. Brown, updates its version and patches. There will be no more extra charge on the part of St. John every time the technician updates the software. Because St. John was a nursing home and has specific needs and details on their EMR, their in-house physicians usually coordinate with the supplier and their technician on how to improve the software. The consistent and continuous communications between Mr. Brown, St. John’s in-house physician and the vendor’s technician is very productive and efficient that it produces much needed improvements on the EMR. It is the administrative staff of St. John that updates and put entries coming from outside organizations. ADS’ EMR has thousands of templates for easy and fast entry of data. There are already glossaries of thousand of medical terms, medicines and the ability to recognize handwritten notes included in the EMR, which is of a great help for their administrative staff. According to ADS’ website, MedicsDocAssistant have the following key features: the technology to enter handwritten notes in the software; it has ready-made templates for easy commands and faster transactions; and it has different security level for various accesses to the program (Advance Data System Corporation, 2008). Ms Jose and Mr. Brown said in the interview that they are contented on the features and services that ADS’ EMR offers. Over-all, they said that the newly acquired EMR was of great help for them and for their patients. Reference: Advance Data System Corporation. 2008. Accessed last March 29 2009, from adsc.com/. L. Jose, personal interview, March 28, 2008.