By KEVIN CHIRI
Slidell news bureau
SLIDELL – In the world of health care today, it isn’t always easy for the common man to understand improvements when it comes to the increasingly technical industry all around us.
But Dr. Richard Milani made things simple for the audience on hand at Ochsner Medical Center, when La. Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Kathy Kliebert were on campus for an important announcement.
Milani, chief clinical transformation officer for Ochsner, pointed to a promotional Ochsner poster on the wall, showing a handful of doctors discussing a situation in the hospital, all with medical charts in their hands.
“See this picture?” Milani said. “This is outdated now because today all the doctors can have the charts at once, helping us improve our connectedness in treating our patients.”
Milani, Kliebert, Ochsner North Shore CEO Polly Davenport, Parish President Pat Brister and other hospital execs were all on hand at a press conference announcing Ochsner had achieved Stage 7 HIMSS designation—meaning they were at the top level of the hospital’s implementation and utilization of information technology applications.
Kliebert said it means Ochsner has an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system that is at a superior level—ranking them as the only hospital in a six-state region to achieve Stage 7 designation—the top rating possible.
As part of the move towards the national health care plan, all health care providers in the country were required to change to the Electronic Medical Records system, which has every medical record of every patient in the country available to all health care providers, doctors and hospitals.
That means an individual could get sick in another state, and emergency room personnel and physicians can immediately access all records on the patient’s history to better treat the individual.
“We saw that situation very recently when a patient was on vacation three states away,” Davenport said. “He began passing out while standing up and when he went to the emergency room, they were immediately able to access his records and see his history. It helped them find a heart blockage immediately and saved valuable time in treating the patient correctly.”
HIMSS Analytics developed the EMR model in 2005 at the forefront of the move nationally to electronic medical records, and now evaluates the process of organizations in utilizing that system.
Hospitals are judged on their level of utilizing that system, with a rating of 0 to 7. Ochsner Chief Nursing Officer Cheryl Woods explained that she approached Davenport over two years ago when seeing that Stage 7 was the top rating, and said the staff wanted to achieve that level.
“We wanted to embrace the 100 percent paperless system because it is really about having best practices in all we do. Our staff agreed that we would have no excuses to push forward with the system since ultimately this is about the best patient care we can provide,” she said. “Polly kept supporting it every step of the way and that’s a big reason we achieved this.”
Kliebert, who made the special appearance in St. Tammany Parish to announce the elite designation, said it is recognition of Ochsner applying technology the best way possible for the good of the patients.
“This is a focus on wellness and the use of technology as a preventative tool,” she said. “It took a tremendous amount of work for Ochsner to achieve this and we wanted to thank them for their commitment.”
One additional aspect to the EMR system is that it offers additional oversight when a physician or health care worker inputs a medication or order for the patient.
“The system helps with better decisions and can alert a doctor that a particular medicine or treatment may not be best due to the history of the patient,” Milani added. “It helps the patients have better outcomes and that’s what we want.”
During the third quarter of 2014, only 3.4 percent of the 5,400 U.S. hospitals in the HIMSS Analytics Database received the Stage 7 designation.