Small-Town Medical Center Realizes Big ROI From Its Emergency Department Information System, The T-SystemEV®

Thousands of people in southwestern Mississippi have come to rely on King’s Daughters Medical Center for exceptional healthcare. To deliver that care, King’s Daughters relies on people, knowledge, and, increasingly, technology.

“We believe it’s our job to stay on top of the latest digital breakthroughs,” said Dr. Peter Hercules, medical director for King’s Daughters Medical Center. “It’s one of the best ways for us to ensure a level of service that’s in step with today’s global quality of care.”

King’s Daughters, located in the town of Brookhaven, has been serving the community since 1894—but its infrastructure is strictly 21st century. The hospital uses a computerized, integrated Health Care Information System (HCIS) to operate all of its major clinical, financial and administrative functions; every department is equipped with computers, tablet PCs and other modern digital devices to facilitate fast and efficient flows of information.

It is this commitment to technological excellence that led King’s Daughters to pursue an Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) in mid-2007. For the prior six years, King’s Daughters had been using a paper-based charting system from T-System, the most widely-used system of its kind in the U.S. “The T-System had been very effective for us,” said Jennifer Jones, Kings’ Daughters’ emergency department case manager. “After seeing how our staff got comfortable with electronic systems in other departments, however, we knew we were ready for a similar switchover in the Emergency Room.”

The King’s Daughters EDIS selection team reviewed three applications, ultimately deciding to go with T SystemEV, T-System’s electronic product designed after its paper-based equivalent. According to Jones, the instant familiarity T SystemEV provided gave it a clear advantage.

“T-System had a proven track record with us. People like the intuitive layout of the T-System, so we knew they would like the T SystemEV setup quickly. Plus, T SystemEV would help us with our performance improvement initiatives, like reducing wait times, improving our coding, expediting accounts receivable payments and generating new tracking data,” Jones noted.

T SystemEV is state-of-the-art in the EDIS field. Spanning the entire ED process from triage to discharge, T SystemEV is a comprehensive system that gives emergency department staff minute-by-minute control of patient status and care.

In addition to the basic system, which includes modules for registration, patient tracking and status, physician and nurse documentation, core clinical data and more, the King’s Daughters team chose to add the T SystemEV Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) module that allows ER doctors to order lab tests, imaging and other diagnostics electronically from the bedside. Order status and results are automatically displayed on the system’s tracking/status board as they are received, significantly increasing the speed of patient care.

“Many smaller hospitals think they can’t justify the cost of a comprehensive EDIS,” commented Jones. “But our hospital’s chief financial officer understood the value of T SystemEV—especially how it could improve the effectiveness of our clinicians, our clerical staff, our administrators and our labs.”

Since T SystemEV was installed in April 2008, King’s Daughters Emergency Department has experienced a surge in performance. Average patient flows have been cut in half—from 284 minutes to 138 minutes—with no increase in staffing. Demographic information obtained at ED registration and billing accuracy has improved as well. “Across the board, the results have been very encouraging,” said medical director Hercules.

T SystemEV’s reporting capabilities add another new dimension to King’s Daughters’ ED management. “We can track all sorts of things—average wait times before evaluation, lab turnaround time, x-ray interpretations and much more,” Jones stated. “Before we had no way to track these parameters. So not only do our doctors and nurses love T SystemEV, but the hospital is able to maximize its performance on the business side as well.”

About T-System: Founded over a decade ago, T-System, Inc. and T-System Technologies, Ltd. (The T-System), combine an uncommon collaboration of clinicians, technologists and service professionals dedicated to serving the current and future clinical information and technology needs of emergency medicine. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, T-System is the leading provider of clinically accepted emergency department information system (EDIS) solutions. Today, more than 2,000 civilian and military EDs in the United States, Puerto Rico, Australia and around the world partner with T-System to make the best patient care a reality for everyone. For more information, please visit www.tsystem.com or contact Joe Lastinger at (800) 667- 2482.