All patients received letters within one day of the drug recall alerts. 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. 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. 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. The implementation of the EMR has also made several quality improvements. FCC has been able to respond faster to prescription refill requests, alert patients to drug recalls, notify patients of laboratory results, and quickly initiate referrals.