The T SystemEV® Featured in Journal of Emergency Nursing Paper on Successful EDIS Implementation
T-System, Inc., the leading provider of clinical documentation and information solutions in emergency departments and urgent care centers, today announced that its Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) solution, The T SystemEV®, was featured in a column entitled "ED Information Systems: A Guideline For Successful Implementation" in the May 2009 issue of Journal of Emergency Nursing, a professional publication. Authored by members of the emergency department staff from Denton Regional Medical Center (DRMC), the article notes DRMC’s selection of The T SystemEV, calling it "user-friendly" and a product that offers "both a physician and a nursing documentation solution in the same system."
"ED Information Systems: A Guideline For Successful Implementation" (Susan Cohn, RN, MSN et. al.) is a record of the experiences of the EDIS implementation team at DRMC, a 200-bed, full-service hospital located northwest of the Dallas/ Fort Worth Metroplex. Offering recommendations for other EDs considering a move to an EDIS, the article details DRMC’s move from a paper-based charting system. After establishing a set of key system requirements and analyzing various alternatives, the team successfully implemented The T SystemEV, which was adopted by the ED physicians, nurses and clerical staff with minimal disruption of daily operations.
The T SystemEV, the most popular EDIS solution in the industry, is currently in use at more than 210 hospitals nationwide. The system spans the entire emergency department experience from triage to discharge, giving doctors and nurses total, minute-by-minute control of a patient’s status and care.
As stated in the article, which appeared in the "Clinical Nurses Forum" section of the May issue, Denton Regional Medical Center’s ED team believed an EDIS would reduce patient wait times, total length of stays, minimize risk exposure, maximize efficiency, and increase patient satisfaction. The paper also summarized the operational and clinical objectives for the EDIS, as set by the implementation team:
- Relatively intuitive and easy to use for the clinical staff
- Include patient tracker functionality and incorporate prescription writing and discharge instruction capabilities
- Minimize clinical staff having to migrate between the hospital’s picture archival and communications system for radiology, as well as its hospital-wide documentation system
- Clinical decision support for emergency physicians
- Allow for nurses and physicians to document on the same system
In choosing The T SystemEV, the EDIS implementation team noted that several factors were involved. At the time of the selection, The T SystemEV "was one of the only products offering both a physician and a nursing documentation system. In addition, the system was found to be user-friendly for a self-admittedly technology-averse staff, and because [The T SystemEV] generally followed the format used by the hospital’s original paper-based charting system, it was thought that training of the staff would be easier than it would have been with another EDIS solution."
After documenting the implementation process, the authors noted several benefits to the hospital’s new EDIS, including the ability for staff "to provide more complete documentation for patients with complex issues." They also pointed to the ability to retrieve charts on demand, which resulted in a greater ability for "personnel to quickly and competently field questions from patients and/or their families days or even weeks after an ED encounter."
The Journal of Emergency Nursing (www.ena.org/publications/jen) is a bi-monthly journal from the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA), the specialty nursing association serving the emergency nursing profession through research, publications, professional development, and injury prevention.
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.