Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Collaborative Healthcare
Customer Profile
Baylor Health Care System is a network of
hospitals, health centers, and a research institute. One of the largest private-sector employers in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, Baylor employs more than 15,000, including 3,300 physicians.
Business Situation
Baylor wanted to give physicians a single access point for patient information, and at the same time, provide patients with a better experience during check-in.
Solution
Physicians can use the Tablet PC with the My Baylor EMR portal solution to share vital data throughout the hospital environment. Patients use the Tablet PC as part of Galvanon’s MediKiosk product to easily enter their medical information.
Benefits
n Wireless access to medical records
n Improved collaboration
n A more efficient and comfortable check-in
n Cost savings and error reduction
n Easy integration with existing technology / “After implementing the technology, the staff were able to regain time to focus more on patient care instead of pushing paper around the office.”
Randy Fusco, Vice President of Strategic Solutions Development, Baylor Health Care System
For a world-class healthcare organization like Baylor, creating an environment of superior care delivery means meeting the needs of many customers: physicians, nurses, administrative staff, and the patients they serve. With the Tablet PC running Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition, Baylor Health Care System has enabled new levels of mobility and collaboration for care providers, streamlined intake and record-keeping processes, and taken another step closer to providing the ideal patient experience.
Situation
A large non-profit organization in the North Texas region, Baylor Health Care System has more than 15,000 employees and over 3,300 affiliated physicians. With 14 hospitals and numerous clinics and specialty centers, Baylor is one of the largest private-sector employers in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, and its flagship facility, Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” for 12 consecutive years.
“Our number-one patient complaint was the check-in process. Patients routinely fill out dozens of pages every time they present at a facility—whether they were here a week ago or a year ago, they have to fill out all that paper.”Jason Whiteside, Corporate Director of Solution Management, Baylor Health Care System
As they seek to provide exemplary care to patients, Baylor Health Care System—like many organizations in the healthcare industry—has faced significant challenges around aggregating patient information into a single view for physicians and nurses. The traditional, paper-based methods of collecting, updating, and disseminating medical records often resulted in delays getting this vital data to care providers. Physicians were spending time locating and searching through files—which often took up nearly half of their office space—instead of practicing medicine in exam rooms and laboratories. As Dr. Peter Dysert, Chief Medical Information Officer at Baylor Health Care System, notes, “The sedentary, desktop-accounting metaphor is not what a physician does. Inherently, physicians and nurses are mobile.”
Paper-based records management also affected patients seeking care from Baylor, especially during the intake process. “Our number-one patient complaint was the check-in process. Patients routinely fill out dozens of pages every time they present at a facility—whether they were here a week ago or a year ago, they have to fill out all that paper,” says Jason Whiteside, Corporate Director of Solution Management. In looking to mitigate this situation and improve patient satisfaction, Baylor also hoped to streamline the workflow and costs associated with clinical staff, who often spent up to 90 percent of their time pushing paper from one place to another.
Solution
As part of Baylor Health Care System’s commitment to providing care to their communities, the organization has embarked on an initiative called “clinical transformation”—using technology such as the Tablet PC with the Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition, along with other products from Microsoft and its partners, to improve workflow and processes for job roles across the hospital environment.
A key part of clinical transformation was Baylor’s response to the need for a single, centralized access point for patient information. The result is My Baylor EMR, a portal solution that uses electronic medical records (EMR) instead of traditional, paper-based medical files to provide this access point. My Baylor EMR is based on Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software and the Microsoft .NET Framework, which helps Baylor create tight integration with their entire technology solutions portfolio as they provide on-demand services to thousands of physicians and support staff. And because My Baylor EMR is easily accessed by Tablet PCs like the LE1600 slate from Motion Computing, physicians and clinicians can retrieve, update, and collaborate with vital, real-time patient data, even when they are away from their offices. Says Randy Fusco, Vice President of Strategic Solutions Development for Baylor, “The ability for physicians to use a Tablet PC extends them to a mobile environment, where typically they would have to go to a nurse’s station or to their desks to get the same information.”
The Tablet PC also plays a crucial role in Baylor’s choice of a patient intake solution: MediKiosk, a self-service kiosk system developed by Microsoft partner Galvanon that incorporates the LE1600 Tablet PCs and ViewSonic hardware. MediKiosk allows patients to use the Tablet PC’s pen-and-ink capabilities to provide all their demographic and insurance information, answer health history questionnaires, and sign forms the first time they check in. Subsequent check-ins are reduced to a matter of minutes, as patients are only required to make any necessary updates. Beyond the savings in time for both patients and staff, the Tablet PC has helped improve the patient experience at Baylor with its combination of mobility and versatility. “One of the things that the patients have really responded well to is the form factor. It’s a very familiar process to take the device, sit down in a chair, and fill out forms using a stylus on a screen; it’s very similar to pen on paper,” according to Whiteside.
Benefits
Deep Integration
Because the Tablet PC runs the Windows operating system and familiar PC applications, it will be easy to integrate with Baylor’s technology investments around the My Baylor EMR portal solution and other backend systems, including Windows Server System and the .NET Framework.
Mobile Access to Patient Data
From the office to the emergency room to the lab, with the Tablet PC, Baylor’s clinicians and administrators will be able to stay wirelessly connected to patient information when and where it’s needed, a vital step in efforts to improve patient care and reduce costs. And because this new level of productivity is so mobile, Baylor has seen a surprisingly rapid adoption of the technology by physicians and nurses.
Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
Sometimes referred to as electronic healthcare records (EHR), this critical information can be easily accessed, viewed, and annotated, then securely shared among clinicians with My Baylor EMR’s single access point and the versatility of the Tablet PC. For Baylor, electronic storage of this vital data creates the potential to reduce the extensive footprint and high costs associated with traditional, paper-based records.
Caregiver Collaboration
With support for note-taking and annotation, plus wireless connectivity, the Tablet PC enables new levels of collaboration and productivity among care providers at Baylor. Further, physicians and their support staff can annotate directly on clinical images and share them for review by other professionals.
Improved Patient Experience
For Baylor’s patients, who range in age from the very young to the very old, the pen-and-ink capabilities of the Tablet PC and the MediKiosk solution help the intake process feel familiar and natural, without requiring extensive prior computer experience. In addition, the reduction in repeat paperwork enabled by the solution also helps improve the experience for patients. “The MediKiosk system has received a 95 percent approval rating in our patient satisfaction survey,” says Whiteside.
Streamlined Administration
Administrative spending accounts for 25 percent of the cost of healthcare, one of the highest rates for any industry. The Tablet PC’s pen-and-ink applications help automate the burdensome, high-cost process of completing and managing clinical and administrative forms. With the MediKiosk system, Baylor has been able to eliminate 13 pieces of paper for every patient—a $20,000-a-year budget expense. Baylor has also seen a 50 percent decrease in the amount of time spent by staff on paperwork, time they are now able to devote to the organization’s ultimate goal—improving patient satisfaction. Fusco adds, “After implementing the technology, the staff were able to regain time to focus more on patient care instead of pushing paper around the office.”
Error Reduction
Beyond administrative inefficiencies, a dependence on paper and handwritten data can be responsible for an unacceptable level of medication errors for a healthcare organization. The forms-automation capabilities of the Tablet PC can help mitigate these risks and enable improvements in patient safety. Baylor’s Mike Williams puts it this way: “We are able to register our patients in real time, and because the data is electronic, we’re able to transfer it from one system to another in a very clean fashion. It has reduced errors and increased the accuracy of patient-provided information.”
Baylor Health Care System has seen the immediate benefits—and the incredible potential—of the Tablet PC at all levels of their deployment. From patients to physicians, investments in the Tablet PC and technology from Microsoft and its partners have helped the team at Baylor deliver to all their customers, improve processes, and see significant progress in their continuing efforts toward achieving clinical transformation.
Microsoft Windows XP TabletPC Edition
Microsoft Windows Tablet PC Edition provides a more versatile computing experience, enabling you to use your PC in more places and more ways.
For more information about Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc