November 6, 2007 – MEDHOST said yesterday El Centro Regional Medical Center, in El Centro, CA, achieved a full return on investment from its MEDHOST Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) system in six months versus the hospital’s projected four years.
The rapid return is due in part to increased charge capture and the near elimination of transcription costs. The city-owned hospital chose MEDHOST because it supports El Centro’s desire to transition to an electronic charting process, improve workflow and organization, and provide clinicians with decision-support technologies.
“We selected MEDHOST because it has all the functionality we needed and more, and when it came right down to it, no other vendor was as willing to makes things happen as MEDHOST,” said John Gaede, director of information services at El Centro. “With MEDHOST, we have a high level of staff acceptance and compliance due not only to its ease-of-use, but also because of MEDHOST’s thorough clinical training throughout the entire process.”
Electronic charting has led to more accurate clinical documentation in El Centro’s ED. With disease-specific templates, system prompts and required fields, ED clinicians are more thorough in their charting, which decreases inaccuracies and also allows the hospital to more accurately bill for care provided. MEDHOST’s Nurse Charting and Physician documentation modules feature automatic behind-the-scenes charge Capture, so as clinicians complete charts, charges are captured in real-time. MEDHOST takes all the documented information – including supplies used, treatments received, orders and administered medication – and automatically assigns the appropriate Level associated with the care given, eliminating the time-consuming and error-prone manual process common in EDs; this resulted in a material increase in per-patient revenue at El Centro.
In the first six months, El Centro recognized a significant increase in Level 3 and Level 4 charges, recuperating $30 to $60 per patient in previously lost revenue that translated into about $500,000 during that timeframe. Before installing MEDHOST, El Centro ED clinicians dictated nearly 70 percent of their charts; after six months that number decreased to less than 1 percent, resulting in a near six-figure savings in transcription costs.
“When results were presented to the board after the first six months, we realized that using a careful and thorough selection process has yielded an enhanced clinical tool that has exceeded our financial objectives,” said Ed Kirkpatrick, chief nursing officer at El Centro. “MEDHOST is by far the most successful installation both financially and from an implementation standpoint of any software in our hospital. The standard we now apply in selecting other technologies for our hospital is MEDHOST.”
For more information: www.medhost.com