New Electronic Health Record Revolutionizes Care

How hard can it be to move from paper files to electronic health records?  The Homestead Village staff members who are responsible for implementing the new electronic health record are learning first hand!  Paper medical records include physician orders and notes, nursing and other clinical documentation, tests, care plans, medication and treatment records, and caregiver documentation.  For some residents, the paper medical record can grow to mutiple file cabinets!  Each doument has to be filed exertly by our Medical Records Staff so that it can be located when needed.  The biggest problem with paper medical records is that the documentation is hard to track, requiring many other logs and reports to track resident care.

So there is no question that electronic records that automatically alert when results are outside of expected parameters is a tremendous leap forward.  The challenge is that all of the current care plans, diagnosis, documentation, specific data tracking, medication and treatment plans need to be pre-loaded into our new electronic health record, PointClickCare, before it will work.  Our nurses in the Apostles Center, Gelhard House and Supportive Services have been diligently uploading the information for the past three months. We now expect to go live with PointClickcare March 24th.  On that date, everything will change!