For a hospital’s emergency department (ED), a patient’s history remains the gold standard for care, often providing the surest path to diagnosis. However, in an ED environment, where patients include those suffering from dementia and other mental illnesses, the elderly, and those who may be seeking drugs, the patient history can be time-consuming and difficult to obtain. This time spent tracking down critical information that isn’t contained in the latest iteration of the hospital’s EMR is time spent away from making a diagnosis, treating more cases, and providing better patient care.
As a solution to this pressing issue facing many hospital emergency departments, Jamie Clifton, our vice president of product management and solutions, contributed a piece to For The Record which explores how direct integration between the EMR and the independent clinical archive (ICA) offers a complete patient record. This 360-degree patient view gives clinicians and support staff actionable information when they require it by bringing disparate information stored across multiple systems into one central repository. Read Clifton’s complete article on how an ICA can help physicians compile the information, which already exists across multiple information technology systems, allowing them to quickly diagnose patients to speed the care process and make way for the next case.
