Trident Family Medicine Residency Program's love affair with computerized records (see "Residents hold key to future") goes back to the program's roots. According to the current residency director, Peter Carek, M.D., the founding department chair's insistence on implementing computerized patient records in 1973 resulted in the installation of an IBM mainframe "that took up two offices at our downtown site."
"It was so big, it needed its own air conditioning," said Carek.
A far cry from today's high-tech computers, the mammoth machinery merely saved physician notes in electronic form; the notes were then printed out and inserted in the patients' paper charts.
Health IT Dream Requires Vision, Saves Costs Over Time
By Sheri Porter • Charleston, S.C.
This story first appeared in the December 2004 FP Report.
Roll the calendar forward to 1991. Under the direction of (then) department chair Cleve Hutson, M.D., Trident took a giant leap into the electronic health record system it uses today.
The program has secured federal grants, most recently one grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that will be put to use in the Clinical Scholars Program (see "Data collection equals quality improvement").
Over time, the department has seen significant cost savings, much of that in reduced personnel, said Hutson. The records room staff dropped from four people to just one. A typing pool of eight secretaries used to tap out notes; now a single person inputs data.
Better coding also puts more money in the bank. "Residents are notorious for undercoding," said Carek. "We've noticed an increase in patient care revenue, and I attribute that to more accurate coding." Templates built into patient charts give coding prompts.
Hutson said the residency's underlying theme has always been the computerized record. "We wanted to establish something here at this program that residents could take with them," said Hutson, who at 73 still sees patients and doesn't want to remember life with paper charts. He awaits the day when all physicians and all hospitals are electronically linked. "That reality is not as far away as people think," said Hutson. "The technology is here; all we have to do is grab it."
The program has secured federal grants, most recently one grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that will be put to use in the Clinical Scholars Program (see "Data collection equals quality improvement").
Over time, the department has seen significant cost savings, much of that in reduced personnel, said Hutson. The records room staff dropped from four people to just one. A typing pool of eight secretaries used to tap out notes; now a single person inputs data.
Better coding also puts more money in the bank. "Residents are notorious for undercoding," said Carek. "We've noticed an increase in patient care revenue, and I attribute that to more accurate coding." Templates built into patient charts give coding prompts.
Hutson said the residency's underlying theme has always been the computerized record. "We wanted to establish something here at this program that residents could take with them," said Hutson, who at 73 still sees patients and doesn't want to remember life with paper charts. He awaits the day when all physicians and all hospitals are electronically linked. "That reality is not as far away as people think," said Hutson. "The technology is here; all we have to do is grab it."
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Data Collection Equals Quality Improvement
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Residents Hold Key to Future
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