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P R E - A D M I S S I O N
S O F T W A R E
Nurses and patients just hate the pre-op phone call, and who can blame them? For nurses, it's 30 or so tedious minutes spent craning their necks with the phone to their ear so they can handwrite a patient's medical history on a paper form — and then hoping the history is complete, accurate and legible. For patients, it's answering questions they've been asked 20 times before, trying to remember every allergy, medication and past surgery, without access to their medication and medical
records. But like most everything else nowadays, pre-admission testing is
moving online. As one vendor put it, "Online admissions are doing for
health care what online banking has done for the financial world — using the Internet to streamline the process for both customer and facility." Read on to see why pre-op calls might soon go the way of shoe covers, cataract sandbags and other relics.
How it works
"Calling patients is not a very effective use of anyone's time," says anesthesiologist Stan Eckert, MD, medical director of the Bailey Square Surgery Center in Austin, Texas, one of a growing number of facilities that's discovered how online admissions streamline the proces of obtaining a patient's medical history.
"More than saving nurses' time, computerized medical screening is a huge step forward in patient satisfaction and safety," adds anesthesiologist David Lennon, MD, medical director of the Peak One Surgery Center in Frisco, Colo.
Online screening programs direct patients to complete their histories online, on their own time, at a protected, secure site. Once patients submit their histories — some software features a built-in scheduling interface so you can view any surgery date to see which patients have done so — your
nurses simply verify that the information is complete and correct, and screen high-risk patients. Yes, nurses still have to phone to inquire further
