The company pursued a corporate portal strategy in an effort to cut the paperwork and time involved for physicians trying to access patient data. The portal has been up and running in a pilot phase since October. Like many health care organizations, Baylor was finding it difficult to manage the vast amounts of paperwork associated with each patient visit to its facilities. Our member physicians send their patients to us for both outpatient services, such as an X-ray, an MRI, or lab tests, or inpatient services, where the person is actually admitted to the hospital for surgery or whatever.
Services generate a wide range of documents.
Each of these services generate reams of paper that must be given to the physician. It's a lot of paperwork. And it all needs to get back to the physicians involved in the patient's care as soon as possible. Especially when the doctor is not always at the hospital. A primary care physician back in his office needs to be kept abreast of a patient's care, and different specialists may make a round at the hospital once a day, but that may not be when the clinical report is ready.