MountainView Hospital went live on September 27, 2005 with T SystemEV version 2.4 for both physicians and nurses. Since that time they have positively integrated the system in their daily emergency department (ED) workflow.
Despite a narrow hallway full of overflow patients on gurneys at 10 o'clock in the morning, MountainView Hospital's emergency department in Las Vegas appeared remarkably poised.
"We have a high acuity here," said Natalie Seaber, RN, director of emergency services at MountainView. All of Las Vegas' hospitals are over-capacity, according to Seaber. Las Vegas' Sierra Nevada Mountains, palm tree scenery, dry climate, plentiful jobs and its notable recreation are bringing 5000 new residents per month, with even more expected.
"In one month we had 5,700 patient holding hours," said Wade Sears, M.D., medical director at MountainView, which sees 42,000 patients a year. "We're taking care of ICU patients from time of admission to discharge. We're examining patients with the x-ray machine going by."
Sears believes the crowding and intensity at MountainView's ED is part of the reason the physicians and nurses are "enamored" with T SystemEV, T-System's electronic charting and tracking system.
"We actually love it. It's made my job a lot easier," Sears said, referring to T SystemEV's chart reviews, quality assurance indicators and easily accessible nursing documentation. The physicians had previously charted on T-System's paper templates. "It's a huge benefit to have a typewritten report [with T SystemEV]," according to Sears. "The medical staff loves it. This is in a language they speak."
"It's very easy, especially when there is no space for everything," Seaber said of T SystemEV charting. Seaber explained how nurses now take their handheld computers to the bedside, use the rolling bedside table to support the mouse and then return to the nursing desk, plug it back in and complete their charting. "Everybody likes the charting and that there are no lost charts," Seaber said. "Our implementation was easy. Within 30 days, everyone was up-to-date." She also said it was easy to teach the several new nurses and one physician who started after the October implementation.
Seaber appreciates the tracking, adding that T SystemEV does a number of other things, including telling her which patients have been seen, patient length of stay, patients waiting and where, patient acuity and chief complaint. "We like going to 'History,' bringing it right up," Seaber cited as an example. "We click and paste information and meds."
"Our level of coding has improved significantly," said John Henner, D.O., assistant director of MountainView's Fremont Emergency Services physician group. Henner also said that although learning T SystemEV slowed them down initially, they are now seeing the same number of patients per hour and that physician documentation is better.
MountainView's Information Services (IS) department also played a key role in the successful implementation of T SystemEV. "The clinical team wanted the technology and the equipment," said Sarah Bloom, hospital director of information services. That was the real key, according to Bloom. "You must have input from the staff."
"T-System was the easiest vendor interaction I have ever done [in 12 years of experience]. It was surreal," Bloom said. She went on to explain that T SystemEV was easy to install, easy to maintain, and that she and her staff attended all the clinical training sessions so they could support the users. "Even I could triage a patient using T-System if I had to," Bloom laughed.
For more information about T-System solutions, please call 800-667-2482.
Return to Top
|
