West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital (WCCH) recently announced that it has successfully launched advanced information technology (IT) as part of its path towards creating a "paperless” electronic health record (EHR). The new IT system from McKesson, a system purchased with funds from the taxpayer approved 2006 capital bond issuance, supports the hospital's goal of taking patient care to the next level by providing caregivers with up-to-date information when and where they need it.

"Our doctors, nurses and other caregivers will have faster and easier access to patient information with the new system, meaning that they can make care decisions much faster without having to locate paper patient charts,” stated Janie Fruge', Vice President of Patient Care and Chief Nursing Officer at WCCH. "The new state-of-the-art IT system has generated much enthusiasm with staff, as they're already seeing the difference it can make in patient care.”

With the installation, WCCH is among a growing number of community hospitals across the nation using EHRs to improve the efficiency of providing care. To date, approximately 11% of hospitals have fully implemented the technology, with even fewer community hospitals having accomplished the task like WCCH[1]. However, federal legislation is giving hospitals and physician practices a boost to deploy EHR solutions by offering financial incentives beginning in October 2010 to those that demonstrate high adoption and meaningful use of the systems.

The hospital is installing the Paragon^® community health information system from McKesson, as the foundation for a complete EHR. Built on Microsoft^® Windows technology, many users are already familiar with the Windows user interface. With electronic patient charts, the care team will spend less time looking for patient information and more time giving care to patients.

With the McKesson Paragon system, physicians can electronically access patient laboratory results, radiology reports, transcription data and medical images at the hospital. To further extend the EHR functionality, WCCH has digitized its medical imaging storage with a picture archiving and communications system (PACS). "By digitizing images and eliminating film, the radiology department expects to substantially reduce costs and have much faster report turnaround times,” states Trey Rion, Chief Information Officer at WCCH. Within the next year, the hospital anticipates adopting Bar Code Medication Administration as part of the care process, providing nurses with a bar-code solution to scan patient wristbands and medications at the bedside. "This move will help improve patient safety by helping to ensure the "five rights” of patient safety: the right drug, dose, patient, route and time,” stated Rion. Future additions to the program will also include computerized physician order entry.