BY GLORIA BUTLER BALDWIN

In keeping with cyber times, home health agencies are boarding the electronic health record (EHR) train to improve patient case management and time efficiency.

Sta-home Health Care in Jackson recently purchased 500 UTStarcom pocket PCs for its home care staff, including aids and nurses. The move is a huge step in synchronizing records and saving countless hours of travel time and manual reporting within the company, which covers 3,500 patients in 60 percent of Mississippi.

Dick Young, executive director of operations at Sta-home, said even the former laptops used didn't offer the efficiency that the new PDAs provide in recording patient notes, payroll and billing information.

"They don't have quite as much memory as the laptops, but the technology makes them almost as functional," said Young. "If I need to see a patient's chart for someone in Meridian or Natchez or Southaven, I can punch it up and see 90 to 95 percent of what would be on the paper chart if we still had it.

"Another advantage is that we have to have nurses on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When they're on call, even if they haven't seen a certain patient, they can pull the information from when they were seen last and get everything they need to know. Before, they'd have to pick up the phone and call in, or come to the office, find their chart and study their records. It also helps with quality review."

While the handheld PCs are extremely efficient, there are some limitations. Because the devices work like a cell phone, if there's no signal, notes can be input but not synchronized until they arrive in a coverage area. Power outages can also be an issue in transferring data.

Deryll Durr, director of business application development with Sta-home and project manager of the software evaluation group chartered with evaluating the current industry regarding technology and home health, said four vendors were evaluated before choosing Dallas-based Homecare Homebase. As of the first week in October, the entire agency is 100 percent onboard.

"As with any IT solution, no code is perfect, especially when you have to lay it on the uniqueness of individual customers," Durr said. "We've got 30 years of history of doing things certain ways and when you come in with a technological solution that many people use, change takes change. We've embraced that fact and are riding it out. If you're not changing, you're not remaining relevant."

Durr called the new electronic record keeping method "Operation Fuzzy Slippers," because nurses and aides can link up to retrieve their daily schedules and patient information before leaving their home in the morning.

Wanda Bankhead has been a registered nurse at Sta-home for 14 years and has experienced the transition from paper forms to PDAs. She said the limitations of the new handheld PCs are small compared to the advantages.

"When we had paperwork, we'd have to fill it out, come in, copy it, file it, and keep dummy charts with us," Bankhead said. "We'd have to look up all the teaching materials and rewrite down every word of it we taught them. These PCs have built-in teaching software for everything, so I can go to the teaching part of the device, copy it into my notes and then individualize it for each patient. Even with the laptops we used, some patients didn't want you to plug into their phone line. So, we'd have to find a place to stop and plug in or wait until we got home or come back to the office. With my PDA device, it's all right there."

ie.
November 2006