What s hard is how to present it, and pulling it all together. Many facilities don t even have a formal library, which can be a trouble spot if surveyors ask how the organization provides knowledge for clinicians or patients. So organizations that take pride in their lack of automation should beware, Martindale says. They could be setting themselves up for Type Is in information management. It s pretty hard not to have access to the Internet.
Internet connections are available in almost every U.S. metropolitan area.
If an organization has a computer but no medical library, it can use the Internet to offer access to MedLine or other online services for patient literature, medical information searches, or patient instruction in discharge planning. The facility should also keep a record of these instructions in the patient s chart, Martindale advises. Similarly, she warns that surveyors are now very interested in strategic planning. For example, they will want to see that an organization has a plan to get a clinical documentation system and if not, why not. The organization will need to be ready to say when it plans to have such a system in place, and if that deadline is not met, it will need to explain why.