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Secrets to Speedier Room Turnover - November 2013 - Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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OSE_1311_part2_Layout 1 11/6/13 9:38 AM Page 54 S O F T W A R E S O L U T I O N Exceptional support Back in 2007, the hospital-based EMR company made Memorial a beta test site for the new surgery center platform they were developing. It was the blind leading the blind, with Ms. Bloode unaware of how bad they had it. "We did what we could. We made a lot of system workarounds, which became a dirty word around here," she says. The facility's experience with the current ASC-centric vendor has been like night and day. "We signed a contact in May 2012 and immediately began communicating through weekly conference calls about the details of our billing and charting needs," says Ms. Bloode. She points to impeccable customer support as an essential aspect of any relationship you forge with an EMR vendor, especially if your facility is like hers: small, without extra staff available to help implement a new system. "Let's face it, anyone could have walked in here and we would have loved their system," says Ms. Bloode, referencing the mental scars from their initial attempt at adding EMRs. But she still appreciates that the company they currently work with has always been available anytime they have questions, from hectic start-up to routine use. "We can make a phone call and get help immediately." Stacey Sult, Memorial's information technology manager, hesitates before politely classifying her time in EMR hell as "interesting." What most concerned her with jumping from the cloud-based servers of the old system to the in-house servers of the new one was being able to access information from off site. It turns out her fears were unfounded. "It feels like my hands have been untied," she says. "I'm able to jump into the system whenever and wherever I want, to help anyone who needs it." She wasn't completely sure what additional hardware the center would need to meet the demands of the new EMR system, but a com5 4 O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | N O V E M B E R 2013

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