Because of its orientation as a community owned, Wooster Community Hospital offers a number of programs each year aimed at serving the wellness of Wayne County.
But a recent donation to one of its health care partners may have raised that bar even higher.
Without solicitation, the Wooster Community Hospital Foundation stepped forward to pay for the hardware and software needed to convert the Viola Startzman Free Clinic medical records to an electronic format.
Hospital CEO Bill Sheron said the conversion eventually will be mandated as part of the government health care overhaul.
“We thought it would be a good move for our foundation to help them buy the initial equipment to get compliant with EMR,” Sheron said.
According to Startzman Clinic Executive Director John Moritz, the measure will make his organization run more efficient, as doctors at the clinic will have access to online patient records.
“It’s a sizable gift,” said Moritz, who wished not to disclose the dollar amount. “It’s something we couldn’t afford to do on our own, and it’s something very much needed. It kind of brings us up to speed with the rest of the medical community.”
Moritz said the clinic is seeing about 2,000 patients who account for nearly 11,000 visits to the clinic. The number typically has increased by 10 percent each year since the clinic opened in 1995.
“We do a lot of crossover work with Wooster Community, Dunlap, Cleveland Clinic, Wooster Eye Center, Wooster Orthopedics,” Moritz said. “Although we share patients, because of necessities, especially in terms of patients to the emergency room, we do a lot of follow-up care.”
Moritz said having electronic medical records will help eliminate errors made because of the inability to decipher certain hand writing, and will increase access to the records.
“Right now we have a lot of volunteers transposing records onto the computer so we can generate reports,” Moritz said. “That will make us cost effective down the road because once everyone gets onto it, things will happen faster. We won’t have as many volunteers going through the charts.”
Mayor Bob Breneman, who serves as chairman of Wooster Community Hospital’s board of governors, said the hospital should be helping the clinic because of the important role the clinic serves in the community.
“It’s a very important player in providing health care for our community,” Breneman said. “We look for ways to help them. We see the medical records piece becoming more and more important as the new health care regulations roll out. This is something we can do with our IT people with the help of the foundation in monetary support.”
While no firm date is in place, Moritz believe the conversion would take place some time over the summer.
Source:http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/4819432
