The EMR is accessible from within the hospital in the emergency room and on the inpatient floors. Instead of dictating discharge summaries and having them transcribed by the hospital's medical records department, the discharge summary is produced directly from the EMR and a hard copy is forwarded to the medical records department for filing. Having access to the patient's record in the hospital setting allows providers to have up to date patient information to support clinical decision-making. Throughout the project, concern for patient satisfaction was of paramount importance to the practice. CRHC began performing patient satisfaction surveys in the third quarter of 1997.
Results are now available for the past year.
FCC concludes that the EMR did not negatively impact patient satisfaction and in fact may have contributed to improving patient satisfaction. Another method for estimating cost reduction is to compare FCC's staff to provider ratio to the national average. FCC has a staff to provider ratio of 2.0. The industry average according to National MGMA survey data is 3.4. Based on a difference of 1.4 staff per provider, the practice is saving approximately 5.6 full time equivalents annually.