While the cat's away...

Since Dr. Kudler is out of town, I thought I'd use this golden oportunity to share some of the items we have been working on for the Hospital-based areas:

• Baystate Orthopedic Surgery Center (BOSC) - implementation of CPOE (order entry) and medication barcode scanning (PPID for those who know the lingo) on August 05, 2013
• NICU/NCCN at BMC - roll-out of INet (telemetry monitor information downloaded into CIS), nursing progress notes and plans of care in CIS.  We also have a couple items for the physicians in NICU/NCCN too!
• Forms Library and Concurrent Scanning - continued roll-out to the patient care areas at BMC over the next couple of months (with plans to move to BFMC, BMLH and DCCC by the end of the calendar year).  The use of Forms Library will help to eliminate the stock piling of paper documents used for patient care in all of those file cabinets, closets, stock rooms, etc.  Forms Library will provide all users of CIS to print medical record documents (i.e. Consents, etc.) and you can be confident it is the latest and greatest approved version (no more issues with version control).  Concurrent Scanning by our colleagues in HIM will allow all those paper documents to be scanned into CIS throughout the course of the hospitalization - no more rummaging thru those maroon-colored charts on the floors.  One more step towards being as paper-less as possible!

These are just three of the many initiatives we are currently sheparding thru to completion this fiscal year. 

And as we begin to look at planning for next year, we are reminded to always keep our eyes on a few things like Meaningful Use Stage 2, ACO, Health Information Exchange (HIE) and the ever-changing healthcare environment in which we all play a vital role.