Connected Care continued
Philanthropy is key to the acquisition of better technologies to improve
patients’ care. For more information on how you can become involved,
visit www.foundation.sw.org.
Dr. O’Brien. Scott & White will unveil a
patient portal website that’s linked to
NextGen and gives patients the option to
request appointments, refill prescriptions,
and receive test results and e-mail messages
from their physicians. “Patients can create
a secure web account and access their own
medical record, make appointments, and
communicate with their physicians,” says
Steve Widmann, director of Web Services
at Scott & White. “It will be selfexplanatory, so patients should easily be
able to use it at their convenience.” The
hope is that patients find these additional
communication vehicles to be a convenient
option, although caregivers at Scott &
White want patients always to feel free to
continue contacting their offices directly
with any questions.
Better data, better
communication
NextGen also increases the amount of data
that can be saved in a patient’s electronic
medical record. This is done by changing
the types of data that are stored and the
way they are entered into the system. Scott
& White’s old Sequoia system relied on
dictation. A physician would orally record
his or her notes, and that information
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would be transcribed and entered into the
electronic record. But dictation services are
very expensive, and notes were limited to
physicians only, says Dr. O’Brien. They
didn’t include input from nurses and
technologists, for example, who also see
patients. With NextGen, notes can be
manually typed in or input through voicerecognition software, thus facilitating a
more team-oriented approach. All
caregivers can document their interactions
with patients—including referrals and
phone calls—in a cost-conscious and more
effective way.
“I can think of so many situations
where I, as a specialist, have been able to
follow what’s been happening with a
patient through their visits to their primary
care physician, and have access to test
results that were drawn sometimes that
same day 90 miles away. I can also know, at
a glance, what the cardiologist is doing,
or what the oncologist is doing if it’s a
patient with cancer,” Dr. O’Brien says.
Also, NextGen uses raw data, such as a
blood pressure reading, instead of a text
format. This allows the system to report
quick snapshots and trends of a patient’s
particular data over time and provides
better analyses.
More-efficient and higher-quality
healthcare has always been a priority at
Scott & White, and the healthcare system
has been recognized by national groups for
its efforts. “What’s clear is that Scott &
White has taken a big step forward toward
improving patients’ experiences with the
electronic medical records system,” says
Dr. O’Brien. “We want our patients to feel
good about all their interactions with us
and know that our focus is to enhance our
relationships with them as we work toward
achieving healthy outcomes.” ■
Dr. O’Brien also is an associate professor of
internal medicine, the Texas A&M Health
Science Center College of Medicine.