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CASE STUDY
ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD (EHR) STORAGE AND ACCESS
UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM (UHS) SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
CHALLENGE: To connect patient information across various silos and improve continuity of care while streamlining the Electronic Health Record (EHR) transition using a private cloud system.
SOLUTION: Leveraged INTECK Corporations’ REPLICA electronic digital transformation (EDT) solution to digitize paper-based electronic health records, capture current medical outcomes from disparate systems and quickly deliver the most important data to the point of care.
RESULTS: REPLICA (EDT) improved access to patient information and created a well organized and comprehensive patient record that furthers EHR transition at UHS and is fast, very clear and that anyone can understand.
University Health System (UHS), a non-profit healthcare provider network in San Antonio, Texas, includes more than 5,000 physicians, nurses, therapists and support staff working together to provide compassionate care and superior patient outcomes. The hospital network offers its patient’s access to leading physicians who use a consultative approach to develop personalized individually focused treatment plans.
To help its physicians create these plans, UHS devised a system that immediately digitized its newest records for patients. Though effective at quickly delivering the most recent patient information to the point of care, this process would still require a large volume of active and inactive, paper-based patient records to reside in both onsite and offsite locations.
UHS worked with INTECK Corporations’ REPLICA (EDT) system and developed a paper-to-digital workflow that creates electronic versions of Electronic Health Records. Using the REPLICA solution, UHS was able to put the right information in its physician hands at the right time using a private Health Information Exchange (HIE) over a internal private cloud system.
Challenge:
Rapid Delivery of Patient Information Where it’s Needed Most
In perhaps no industry is the timely delivery of information more critical than healthcare. When a patient’s safety depends on the right data being in the right hands at the right time, any delay can have the costliest of consequences. To ensure that its physicians have access to the proper patient information, UHS established a document conversion program designed to create electronic versions of the paper records generated whenever an individual was admitted to the hospital or clinics.
While this imaging program helped UHS create a digital set of its most recent records — and facilitated its transition to an EHR — it needed a process for converting and delivering the information contained in its existing paper records. Since UHS often treats patients with chronic illnesses, these records could remain active for some time — regardless of the duration between visits — forcing caregivers to search for patient information in both paper and electronic formats
However, it soon became clear that requiring physicians to locate a single record among the various silos of patient information — including physical storage facilities, and paper and digital formats — could compromise care. This prompted the team at UHS to pursue a more streamlined, efficient means of accessing this critical data. The goal at UHS was to ensure caregivers had the right information on hand at the right time and to do so, UHS needed to develop a workflow that digitized and delivered paper-based records on an as-needed basis.
Solution:
An Intelligent, Selective Imaging Program
To realize its goal of delivering the most important data to the point of care, UHS opted to work with INTECK Corporation, its long-time information management partner. Collaborating with INTECK Corporation UHS developed a paper-to-digital workflow that creates electronic paper-based patient records.
At the heart of this new process is the INTECK REPLICA document imaging solution. REPLICA is a core capability of the INTECK Corporations’ paper to electronic digital transformation (EDT) platform, which helps healthcare organizations connect patient information across silos and streamline the conversion of paper records to electronic form via customizable imaging, backup and storage options.
REPLICA enables UHS to digitize a patient record, develop an electronic abstract and move these images to its EHR storage system. This process ensures that, once uploaded, the abstracts are instantly available to all caregivers in a single system throughout the continuum of care accessed through a private HIE cloud using a secure VPN and internet resource that meet HIPAA requirements.
Benefits:
Accessible Information, Improved Patient Care and Significant Cost Savings
The INTECK Corporation REPLICA solution has delivered significant benefits to UHS in the form of timeliness and accessibility of information. Once a record is scanned it is available at the point of care, where it is most useful. Caregivers no longer have to search for patient information across formats — instead, it is readily available to all caregivers as needed.
In fact, since kicking off the project, UHS has uploaded well over 36million images to its electronic EHR storage system. Having this volume of information on hand greatly improves accessibility, leading to an optimized workflow and — ultimately — better patient care.
Going forward, UHS realized considerable cost savings related to the resources that support EHR operations — especially as the organization expanded its use of REPLICA to incorporate different record sets.
And, as a key component of the INTECK Solution, REPLICA is also playing a significant role in helping UHS advance its EHR transition and adopting REPLICA was critical to bridging the gap between paper and electronic records and providing the highest standards of patient care.
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